
Glass BD^I 

Book. l/h 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



NORTH POLAR 
ZEMITN 




THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE 
Illustrating pages 33-40 
The upright central line is the polar axis of the heavens and earth. The two seven-staged pyra- 
mids represent the earth, the upper being the abode of living men, the under one the abode of the dead. 
The separating waters are the four seas. The seven inner homocentric globes are respectively the 
domains and special abodes of Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk, and Ninib, each being a 
"world-ruler " in his own planetary sphere. The outermost of the spheres, that of Anu and Ea, is the 
heaven of the fixed stars. The axis from center to zenith marks '* the Way of Anu "; the axis from 
center to nadir " the Way of Ea." See Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxii, pp. 138- 
144; xxiii, opposite p. 388; and xxvi, pp. 84-92. 



The 
Earliest Cosmologies 



THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED IN THOUGHT BY 

THE ANCIENT HEBREWS, BABYLONIANS, 

EGYPTIANS, GREEKS, IRANIANS, 

AND INDO-ARYANS 



A GUIDEBOOK FOR BEGINNERS IN THE STUDY 
OF ANCIENT LITERATURES AND RELIGIONS 



BY 
WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN, S.T.D., LL.D. 

h 

Member of the Royal Asiatic Society; Corporate Member of the American 

Oriental Society; President of Boston University 1873-1903; Author of 

"The True Key to Ancient Cosmology and Mythical Geography," 

"The Cradle of the Human Race," etc., etc., etc. 






New York: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






Copyright, I909, ky 
EATON tc MAINS. 



SEP 3 7909 



RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

WITH FRIENDLY PERMISSION 

TO 

C. H. W. JOHNS, M.A., Litt.D. 

QUEENS' COLLEGE 

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 

ENGLAND 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedication 3 

Illustrations 9 

Preface 11 

CHAPTER I 

The Hebrew Universe as Commonly Pictured 

A typical representation 19 

Inconsistency in interpretation 21 

Lack of thoroughness 21 

Antecedent probabilities 22 

A profession of faith 24 

The declaration of an astronomer 25 

CHAPTER II 

The Hebrew Universe as Pictured by Schiaparelli 

An improved reconstruction of the system 26 

International interest therein .' 26 

Diagram less inclusive than its title 27 

A double firmament and the reasons therefor 29 

Embarrassing questions 30 

God's will effective below but not above the earth 32 

CHAPTER III 
The Babylonian Universe Newly Interpreted 

Seven diagrams representing the Babylonian universe 33 

No two of the seven alike 33 

A new interpretation needed 34 

The twelve conditions to be met 34 

A diagram that satisfies each of the twelve requirements 38 

Origin of this remarkable world-concept 40 

CHAPTER IV 

The Biblical, Rabbinical, and Koranic Universe in the 

Light of the Babylonian 

Was the Biblical universe essentially Babylonian? 41 

An argument against the supposition 41 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Considerations favoring the supposition 45 

The Rabbinical world-view 49 

The Koranic 52 

Mohammed's six ascents into the seventh heaven 53 

CHAPTER V 
The Egyptian Universe 

A pioneer's first representation 58 

A contemporary criticism 60 

Picture embodying some later modifications 62 

Difficulties remain 64 

Traces of agreement with the Babylonian system 66 

Steindorff discovers but fails to correlate the Counter-earth 68 

CHAPTER VI 
The Homeric Universe 

A claim that the Homeric earth is a sphere 70 

Other parts of his universe more or less Babylonian 73 

Where further evidence may be found 73 

The irremovable "thresholds" above and below the earth 75 

Testimony of Herodotus to Babylonian influence 76 

An ampler present-day claim 77 

CHAPTER VII 
The Indo-Iranian Universe 

The world-concept of the Surya Siddhanta 79 

Sevenfold division of the Northern hemisphere 81 

Sevenfold division of the Southern hemisphere 83 

Substantial identity of Indian and Iranian world-concepts 85 

The seven "island continents" 86 

A puzzling passage made plain 93 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Buddhistic Universe 

Four chief deviations from the parent system 95 

Nine points of agreement with it 95 

Both agreements and deviations should be further investigated. 99 

Two pictures of the Buddhistic universe 100 

One with quadrangular DvTpas, the other with circular 100 

More detailed description of this world-view in the Appendix . . 100 



CONTENTS 7 

CHAPTER IX 
Recovered Trace op Two Lost Spheres 

PAGE 

Two lunar and two solar spheres 101 

Discriminations hitherto neglected 102 

Difficulty of the task 103 

It should nevertheless be undertaken 103 

A long-standing problem in Egyptian cosmology 104 

Its solution 107 

CHAPTER X 
Points and Problems for Future Studt 

The prehistoric world-concept 109 

Myths as beginnings of a philosophy of nature 110 

Why hard to understand 112 

Their seeming lack of harmony often unreal 112 

Mythical representations of the world's axis 113 

Also of the cosmic water-system 115 

And of inter-mundane highways 116 

The lunar sphere as bridge from underworld to upper 118 

The Zodiac, when invented, and where 119 

The answer to these questions becoming clearer 126 

APPENDIX 

I. The Mandala Oblation 133 

II. Homer's Abode of the Dead 157 

III. Homer's Abode of the Living 178 

IV. The Gates of Sunrise in the Oldest Mythologies 192 

V. The Homeland of the Gandharvas 197 

VI. The World-Tree of the Teutons 200 

VII. Problems Still Unsolved in Indo- Aryan Cosmology 205 

VIII. Index of Authors 217 

IX. Index of Subjects 221 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Universe of the Ancient Babylonians frontispiece 

PAGE 

The Hebrew Universe, drawn by Whitehouse 20 

The Hebrew Universe, drawn by Schiaparelli 27 

The Egyptian Universe as described by Maspero 59 

The Egyptian Universe as later drawn by him 63 

The World of Homer 169 

Rootage of the Teutonic World-Tree 203 

Original diagrams illustrative of the Earth of the Iranians, the 
Earth of the Indo-Aryans, the Navel of the Earth, the Earth of 
Dante, and the Earth of Columbus, are given in The Cradle of the 
Human Race. 

The diagrams by Whitehouse, Schiaparelli, and Maspero, repro- 
duced in the following pages, are used with the kind permission 
of their publishers. 



PREFACE 

In the judgment of those who have seen it 
the following treatise sheds a new light on not 
a few important questions. It ought to prove 
helpful to all students of ancient thought, pre- 
eminently to all teachers of ancient literatures. 
It deals with a theme fundamental beyond all 
others. Back of every religion, and of every 
philosophy or science worthy of the name, lies 
a "world-view" — a concept in which are in- 
cluded all localities and all beings supposed in 
that religion or philosophy or science to exist. 
In proportion to its clearness and complete- 
ness, it in every case groups and mentally 
pictures these localities and beings in certain 
relations to each other, and thus also in their 
total unity as a universe. The science which 
critically investigates and expounds the world- 
view of any people, or of any system of doctrine, 
is called Cosmology; the branch which does this 
for a group or class of world-concepts is known 
as Comparative Cosmology. The present work 
may be regarded as an introduction to this 
fascinating study. 

For more than three decades it has been the 

duty and the delight of the writer to inquire 

11 



12 PREFACE 

into the world-concepts of the most ancient 
peoples of the earth, and to interpret these 
concepts as clearly as possible to successive 
classes of eager-minded students. Almost at 
the very beginning of this comparative study 
there began to be reached results noticeably 
divergent from current teachings in various 
fields of scholarship; results so illuminative and 
mutually self-supporting, however, that in the 
year 1881 I was led to publish a paper entitled 
The True Key to Ancient Cosmology and 
Mythical Geography. Eminent scholars, not 
only in this country but also in Great Britain 
and on the continent of Europe, welcomed the 
essay with generous interest and appreciation. 
In 1885, in a work on The Cradle of the Human 
Race, further studies in the ancient cosmologies 
were published on both sides of the Atlantic. 
A few years later, in the Journal of the American 
Oriental Society for 1901, I set forth the view 
of the Babylonian heavens and earth opened 
to me by the "True Key"; illustrating it more 
fully in the same Journal for the year 1902, 
and for the year 1905. Though this new view 
(pictured in the frontispiece of the present 
volume) differed toto ccelo (and tota terra) from 
all previously presented, it at once received 
attentive consideration from some of the most 
authoritative of Assyriological scholars. Three 
such, all university professors of international 
reputation, representing respectively Paris, Ox- 



PREFACE 13 

ford, and Munich, eagerly expressed their partial 
or full indorsement. One of them wrote : "Your 
paper is full of light. I believe you have dis- 
covered what was really the orthodox cos- 
mological system of the Babylonians, and at 
the same time the origin of the Pythagorean 
system." So self -evidencing has the new inter- 
pretation proved that, in the eight years since 
it was proposed as a substitute for the various 
older teachings, not one writer has to my 
knowledge questioned its complete agreement 
with ancient Babylonian thought. 

In this recovered Euphratean world-view my 
recent pupils have found such assistance toward 
a ready understanding of the biblical and other 
ancient cosmologies that they have repeatedly 
urged me to print more of the comparative 
studies that have proved helpful to them. So 
immense, however, is the field, and so frag- 
mentary must be the contribution which any 
one man can hope to make, that I have hesitated 
to issue what I have prepared. Almost daily 
new light is reaching the investigator of pre- 
historic times and peoples, so that any new 
archaeological deduction is liable to need for its 
best statement some modification before it can 
be carried through the press and through the 
judgment day that awaits every book sufficiently 
comprehensive to be of interest to many and 
diverse specialists. In the world of scholars, 
as elsewhere, however, obligations are mutual, 



14 PREFACE 

and owing, as I do, to other pioneers all that I 
myself have come to see, I cannot refuse to 
make such return as I may be able. The book 
has been forty years, I suppose, in the making, 
but no doubt I could spend forty more upon 
it and still find each new touch suggesting and 
demanding yet another. 

The ten chapters of the work cover all the 
nations from whose literary remains we can 
hope for any important light on the world- 
concepts of generations yet earlier. The Chinese 
are not included, for the reason that as yet the 
Sinologues have found in Chinese literature no 
system of cosmology clearly distinguishable 
from the Buddhistic and manifestly antedating 
it. Following the lead of my lamented friend, 
Mr. Terrien de la Couperie, an increasing 
number of scholars are coming to ascribe the 
beginnings of Chinese civilization to a pre- 
historic colony of immigrants from the basin of 
the Euphrates. If this view shall ultimately 
find general acceptance, it will, of course, be 
easy to believe that the pre-Buddhistic world- 
view of this ancient nation, like that of so 
many others, was identical with that of the 
Babylonians. (See Richthofen, China, Bd. i, 
404ff.) 

In an Appendix I have given certain mis- 
cellaneous papers pertinent to the general theme. 
But the most helpful supplement to the dis- 
cussions presented in the ten chapters will be 



PREFACE 15 

found in the work already mentioned, The 
Cradle of the Human Race (usually cited by its 
short title, Paradise Found), of which a new and 
enlarged edition (the twelfth) is nearly ready 
for the press. 

I cannot close this foreword without grateful 
mention of some of the colleagues and friends 
to whom I am indebted for valued private 
assistance in the preparation of the pages that 
follow — assistance kindly given in personal con- 
ference, or in correspondence, or oftenest of all 
in both interviews and letters. It must be 
understood, of course, that the mention com- 
mits no one of the named to any of the inferences 
I have drawn from the information courteously 
communicated. To obviate the embarrassment 
of attempting to arrange the list according to 
the measure of my debt, the alphabetical order 
is adopted: 

Professor Philippe Berger, College de France, 
Paris; Ernest A. Wallis Budge, Litt.D., F.S.A., 
British Museum, London; Rev. Professor R. H. 
Charles, D.D., Trinity College, Dublin; Pro- 
fessor Judson B. Coit, Ph.D., Boston University; 
Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D., 
London University; Professor Fritz Hommel, 
Ph.D., S.T.D., University, Munich; Professor E. 
Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., Yale Uni- 
versity; Professor Herbert A. Howe, A.M., Sc.D., 
University Park, Colorado; Professor A. V. W. 
Jackson, L.H.D., LL.D., Columbia University, 



16 PREFACE 

New York City; Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., 
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania; Rev. C. H. 
W. Johns, M.A., Fellow Queens' College, Cam- 
bridge, England; Professor E. Kuhn, Ph.D., 
University, Munich; Professor Charles Rockwell 
Lanman, Ph.D., LL.D., Harvard University; 
Professor Ernst Leumann, Ph.D., University, 
Strassburg; Professor Thomas Bond Lindsay, 
Ph.D., Boston University; Professor David 
Gordon Lyon, Ph.D., D.D., Harvard University; 
Professor A. A. Macdonell, Ph.D., Director 
India Institute, Oxford; Professor G. C. C. 
Maspero, D.C.L., College de France, Director of 
Excavations, Cairo, Egypt; Professor H. G. 
Mitchell, Ph.D., S.T.D., Boston; Professor W. 
Max Mliller, D.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 
Professor Laurence H. Mills, M.A., D.D., Uni- 
versity of Oxford; Directeur L. de MillouS, 
Musee Guimet, Paris; E. W. B. Nicholson, M.A., 
Librarian Bodleian Library, Oxford; Theophilus 
Goldridge Pinches, LL.D., London University; 
Professor Archibald H. Sayce, D.D., LL.D., 
Queen's College, Oxford; Rev. Jefferson E. Scott, 
Ph.D., S.T.D., Ajmere, India; Professor Wil- 
helm Spiegelberg, Ph.D., University, Strassburg; 
Professor E. B. Tylor, LL.D., F.R.S., University 
of Oxford; Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., 
LL.D., New York; Professor William Marshall 
Warren, Ph.D., Boston University; Mrs. Pro- 
fessor George Arthur Wilson, Ph.D., Syracuse 
University. 



PREFACE 17 

As I write these names I am painfully re- 
minded of not a few others equally entitled to 
appreciative mention, whose honored bearers, no 
longer with us, have risen to loftier viewpoints 
in the universe than any we on earth can reach. 
Ever sacredly cherished shall be their memory. 

Postscript. — Since the foregoing was written 
Dr. C. H. W. Johns has laid me under new and 
deeper obligation by carefully reading the entire 
manuscript of the work and kindly expressing 
his unqualified approval of its fundamental 
positions. 

Boston University. W. F. W. 



CHAPTER I 

THE HEBREW UNIVERSE AS COMMONLY PICTURED 

Under the word "Cosmogony," in the excel- 
lent new Dictionary of the Bible edited in five 
volumes by Dr. James Hastings, may be found 
a good representation of the Hebrew conception 
of the universe as ordinarily interpreted. The 
article is from the pen of Principal O. C. White- 
house, and it is illustrated by the diagram here 
reproduced. 

Let us examine this picture. In the center 
of a sea that is limitless in every direction, 
we are shown a thick circular disk to represent 
the Earth. Between its upper and lower sur- 
faces there is an hermetically closed cavern 
to represent Sheol, the general abode of the 
dead. Around the disk's edge on the upper 
surface there is a ring of very lofty mountains. 
To this ring there is fitted, all the way round, 
and by a water-tight joint, a huge metallic 
vault, hemispherical in form; this represents 
the sky. Heaven and Earth do not include 
the universe, it will be noticed; for below the 
earth-disk, and above the sky-vault, in every 
direction, however far thought may go, there 
are waters infinite. To aid our comprehension 
of the deluge-narrative certain sluiceways are 

19 



20 



THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 



represented as extending upward through the 
earth-disk, special pains being taken, as of 
course was necessary, to avoid flooding the 
Sheol-cavity. In the sky-vault certain orifices 



- — ■ the Firman. - 




— == = -Tc-h 6-m — R-3-frfrati- 



m$mm 



THE UNIVERSE OF THE HEBREWS 
According to Whitehouse 

are placed and carefully marked "Windows." 
Just under the vault on one side there is a 
ringed dot, marked "Sun," opposite to which 
are three asterisks denominated "Stars." Just 



WHITEHOUSE'S HEBREW WORLD 21 

above these, and, like the others, hugging the 
vault, is a new (or old) "Moon," which, with 
some unexplained perversity, turns her illu- 
minated side away from the sun. All these 
nocturnal role-players may well account them- 
selves superfluous, for to the blazing sun there 
has been given no discoverable retreat to 
which he may retire when disposed to leave 
the field and the hour to his lesser colleagues. 

What now is the evidence upon which this 
representation is put before us as a true ac- 
count of the Hebrew and older Babylonian 
heavens and earth? Simply a few manifest 
metaphors torn from their context in the lan- 
guage of the Old Testament poets. Let us 
hear our interpreter: "The Hebrews thought of 
the world as a disk (Chug, cf . Isa. 40. 22) ; and 
to this earthly disk corresponded the heavenly 
disk (also called Chug, cf. Job 22. 14; Prov. 
8. 27)." In this statement he seems incon- 
sistent with himself, for if the earth is a disk, 
and heaven a disk, it is plain that the latter 
cannot be (as his diagram represents it) a 
hemispherical "vault, or arched dome." Put- 
ting the case in another way, we must insist 
that if, in the passage relating to heaven, he 
makes "Chug" mean something spherical or 
hemispherical, he must — to be consistent — make 
"Chug" also mean something spherical or 
hemispherical when applied to the earth. 

A little earlier in his article Dr. Whitehouse 



22 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

argues as follows: "Numerous passages may 
be cited to prove that the Hebrew Semite 
regarded the sky as a solid vault, or arched 
dome. In Job 37. 18 it is compared to a firm 
molten mirror, the hue of which in Exod. 24. 10 
is described as resembling sapphire, while from 
Amos 9. 6; Job 26. 10, 11; Prov. 8. 27, 28, we 
gather the additional details that this solid 
compacted vault, or arched dome, was sup- 
ported on the loftiest mountains as pillars 
(Job 26. 11). It was also provided with win- 
dows and gates (Gen. 7. 11; 28. 17; 2 Kings 7. 
2, 19; Psa. 78. 23). Above this solid rakia 
('firmament') flowed the upper or heavenly 
waters (Gen. 1. 7), which descended in rain 
through these openings (Psa. 104. 3; 148. 4; 
2 Kings 7. 19)." 

These precious "details," and this precious 
textual proof of their correctness, seem to have 
been handed down from editor to editor, with 
faithful repetition, from the date of the first 
Bible Dictionary ever issued. And, not with- 
out countenance from the same predecessors, 
the author assures us that his picture of the 
Hebrew universe accurately represents the Baby- 
lonian as well. 

For the sake of a change, if nothing more, 
let us hope that the next writer on this subject 
will begin with the question of antecedent 
probability. Nature knows nothing of disks, 
hardly anything of discoids. A disk is a product 



WHITEHOUSE'S HEBREW WORLD 23 

of measurably advanced art. On the other 
hand, primeval men saw spheres and spheroids 
on every hand. The sun and moon are visible 
globes. The sand grain and the bowlder, the 
hailstone and the dewdrop, the seeds of grass, 
the fruit of trees, the egg of bird and beast 
and fish, the sky which incloses all, and the 
eye which discerns all, are spheres or spheroids. 
What so natural as to think the earth a sphere? 
What so unlikely as the supposition that the 
artless ancestors of any ancient people ascribed 
to the earth the form of the mathematical 
solid bounded by two parallel circular planes 
in horizontal position, and the segment of a 
hollow cylinder in position perpendicular? Amer- 
ican Indians at the time of their discovery 
were found possessed of the idea that the earth 
is a ball 1 — why should we not freely ascribe 
so natural a concept to the ancient Hebrews? 
It was found even among the savage Battaks 
of Borneo. 2 

But the fair and sufficient criticism to be 
passed upon all our accepted expounders of 
Hebrew cosmology is that they fail in thorough- 
ness. By a slightly more extended and thor- 
oughgoing application of their exegetical method 
they could further show, and with equal cogency, 
that among the Hebrews the heavens were 



*H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii, p. 536. 
a L. Frobenius, Die Weltanschauung der Naturvdlker, Weimar, 1898, 
p. 124. 



24 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

thought to contain a supply of wax, or of some 
similar substance, with which at appropriate 
times the Almighty "sealeth up" the stars 
(Job 9. 7) ; also, that the earth was believed to 
possess at least one ear (Isa. 1. 2: "Give ear, 
O earth!"). One would think it time to have 
done with such wooden literalism as that which 
we are criticising; but, unfortunately, even our 
very latest Encyclopaedia Biblica, that edited 
by Professor Cheyne, brings us in the cosmo- 
graphic portions no relief. Our young people 
are entitled to some better guidance in this 
field of study. Pending its arrival, the present 
writer avails himself of the opportunity to re- 
new his profession of faith that both Baby- 
lonian and Hebrew thought were adjusted to 
an earth utterly un-disklike in form, and to a 
system of heavens above heavens whose com- 
position was as far removed from earthly 
metals as it was from the silk or the goat's 
hair of Psa. 104. 2, and Isa. 40. 22. Despite 
all that the rehearsers of traditional cosmology 
say, or rather because of what they say, and 
because of the inconsistencies in which they con- 
tinually involve themselves, one long-interested 
student believes that their attempted recon- 
struction of the Hebrew and earlier Semitic 
universe is pitiably mistaken, and that the 
eminent American astronomer, Newcomb, is far 
nearer the truth when he pens this deliberate 
public statement: "Not enough credit has been 



WHITEHOUSE'S HEBREW WORLD 25 

given to the ancient astronomers. There is 
no time within the scope of history when it 
was not known that the earth is a sphere, and 
that the direction down, at all points, is toward 
the same point at the earth's center." If 
after the word "sphere" he had written, "or 
other unsupported solid," he would have stated 
the exact truth. 

Soon after the foregoing was written, a 
distinguished Italian astronomer published a 
new and improved representation of the Hebrew 
world, and to a consideration of this we will 
pass in our next chapter. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HEBREW UNIVERSE AS PICTURED BY 
SCHIAPARELLI 

In the year 1903, Dr. G. Schiaparelli, director 
of the Brera Observatory in Milan, published 
in Italian a work entitled Astronomy in the 
Old Testament. The following year a German 
translation with certain emendations was issued 
at Giessen. A year later there appeared at 
Oxford an " Authorized English Translation, 
with many Corrections and Additions by the 
Author." In this book of 184 pages we have 
at the time of this writing the latest published 
attempt to portray the world-concept of the 
ancient Hebrews. 

In most respects the work well deserves the 
warm international welcome so promptly ac- 
corded it. It would be exceedingly difficult, I 
think impossible, to find another astronomer as 
skilled in Old Testament studies, or an Old 
Testament scholar by profession equally dis- 
tinguished in astronomy. The only really weak 
chapter in the book is the second, the one 
relating to the Old Testament cosmos as a 
whole, and even here there are some improve- 
ments on the corresponding points in the inter- 
pretations criticised in our opening chapter. 

26 



SCHIAPARELLI'S HEBREW WORLD 



27 



The author's cut representing the Hebrew 
universe, with his accompanying explanations, 
is here reproduced. 




HEAVEN, THE EARTH, AND THE ABYSSES 
According to the writers of the Old Testament. — Schiaparelli 

Explanatory Key : 

ABC = the upper heaven; ADC = the curve of the abyss; AEC = the 
plane of the earth and seas; SRS = various parts of the sea; EEE = 
various parts of the earth; GHG = the profile of the firmament or 
lower heaven; KK = the storehouses of the winds; LL = the store- 
houses of the upper waters, of snow, and of hail ; M = the space occupied 
by the air, within which the clouds move; NN = the waters of the 
great abyss; xxx = the fountains of the great abyss; PP = Sheol or 
limbo; Q = the lower part of the same, the inferno properly so called. 

On this illustrative picture it must be re- 
marked in the way of friendly criticism that 
while, on page 38, the author speaks of it as 
representing the total universe as conceived of 
by the Old Testament writers, it in reality 



28 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

omits all the heavenly bodies. It is therefore 
simply a picture of the earth and its immediate 
belongings. On another page the author him- 
self incidentally refers to it as representing "the 
central and immovable part of the universe." 
A part is never the whole. Where is the moon 
which was made to rule the night? And where 
the sun, which our author describes as "the 
most magnificent work of the Almighty"? 
Where are " Arcturus and his sons," the 
"bands of Orion," the Pleiades with their 
1 'sweet influences' ' ? Where are the innumerable 
stars which God showed to Abraham, promising 
him that like them his seed should be innu- 
merable? Did no Hebrew ever notice the 
Milky Way and account it a part of the universe 
of God? We really cannot consent to think 
of Job and David and Isaiah as having been 
lifelong prisoners under a "firmament" which, 
as described in all seriousness by an American 
divine as late as in 1899, "was like a brass 
dome, or cover, beaten out, and shut down 
around the edge of the earth like the cover of 
a dinner platter." 

Schiaparelli by no means denies to the ancient 
Hebrews a knowledge of the heavenly bodies, 
but his diagram, though professedly including 
"Heaven," contains no hint of them. His 
"firmament" is some improvement on the brass 
one just referred to, for he is careful to state 
that it is "transparent, allowing the light of 



SCHIAPARELLFS HEBREW WORLD 29 

the stars to pass through." But it is still "a 
vault of great solidity." It still has in all 
literalness "flood-gates, or portcullises," and 
rain can fall only when these are opened. In 
fact, he states that "the main duty" of this 
solid firmament "is to support the upper waters, 
holding them suspended on high, above the 
earth, and separated from the lower waters of 
the continents and seas and abysses." More- 
over, as he well adds, "considering the spherical 
and convex shape of the firmament, the upper 
waters could not remain above without a second 
wall to hold them in at the sides and at the 
top. So a second vault above the vault of 
the firmament closes in, together with the 
firmament, a space" — the space marked LL in 
his diagram. Instead, therefore, of Dr. White- 
house's celestial ocean upheld by the firma- 
ment above the sun, moon, and stars, our 
present interpreter gives us a celestial tank, 
situated somewhat below the sun, moon, and 
stars, but bottomed by the firmamental "vault 
of great solidity," and topped by a "second 
vault" of like character. 

For one I strongly suspect that King Solomon 
would have betrayed some disturbance of 
mental serenity had a wise man from the 
West appeared at his court and presented this 
diagram of the cosmical water-system, intimat- 
ing, no matter how politely, that it represented 
the cosmology taught in the schools of Jeru- 



30 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

salem and believed in by her reigning king. 
If not too impatient, he very likely would 
have asked some embarrassing questions. For 
example: "How is it that this firmament of 
yours is pervious to the winds stored up in 
KK, but impervious to the waters stored up 
in LL? Again, if these upper waters require 
for their support a vault of great solidity, 
how is it that they do not immediately rush 
down to GG, causing the air confined in KK 
to rise and gather in the space between B 
and H? If such a downrush of the waters is 
prevented by a metallic partition welded water- 
tight to each of the two vaults all the way 
round at the base of the supported waters, 
in what one of our Hebrew authors, O wise 
man of the West, did you find it mentioned? 
And what name was given to so important a 
part of the world's structure?" Lucky would 
such a wise man from the West have been if 
the incensed king had courteously forborne to 
apply to him one or more of the mordant re- 
marks ascribed to the royal pen in the book 
of Proverbs. But, surmises apart, who does 
not find it exceedingly difficult to understand 
how our author can quote, as he does, such 
Old Testament passages as the following : "When 
the clouds are full, they spread rain over the 
earth" (his own translation of Eccl. 11. 3); 
"The clouds drop water" (Judg. 5. 4); "He 
draweth up the drops of water which distill 



SCHIAPARELLI'S HEBREW WORLD 31 

in rain . . . and drop upon men abundantly" 
(Job 36. 27); and still give us this traditional 
overhead water-tank notion as a just repre- 
sentation of Old Testament ideas on the subject 
of rain-production? 1 

That our author should have found a firma- 
ment of great solidity necessary as a support 
for the "upper waters/' and a second firmament 
above that needed to keep the waters from 
flowing off the convexity of the first, is the 
more remarkable, since in two cases, discussed 
in the very same chapter, he ascribes to the 
Hebrews a naive acceptance of an original 
divine decree or a continuous exercise of God's 
omnipotent will as an all-sufficient explanation 
for that which would seem to be a more strik- 
ing violation of this same law of gravitation. 
The first is the case of the supposed feeding 
of mountain springs from the sea, which 
Schiaparelli insists was considered as occur- 
ring through subterranean channels only. Re- 
specting this he says: "That the lower waters 
should overcome the laws of natural gravity, 
and rise again from subterranean depths to 
the surface, was considered as a result of the 
omnipotence of God (Amos 5. 8)." This is on 

1 Hebrew scholars do not all agree that by "the waters above the 
firmament" (Gen. 1. 7) rain-water is meant. Keerl, for example, argues 
through more than thirty pages that in the mind and meaning of the 
sacred writer the "upper waters" were the primordial substrate out of 
which the sun, moon, and other planets were formed (Die Schdpfungs- 
geschichte, Basel, 1861, pp. 352-388). This uncertainty as to the mean- 
ing of the very term under discussion is overlooked by most interpreters. 



32 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

page 29. On page 27 we have the second 
case, that of the earth, which he says, "has 
no need of a base or support outside of itself," 
for although "all the mass of the earth, in- 
cluding the lower waters, is suspended in space 
and rests upon nothing/ ' its remaining so 
suspended was to the Hebrew mind sufficiently 
accounted for by the one thought that the 
whole mundane system was "simply fixed 
unalterably by the divine will." One cannot 
help wondering how our author would explain 
why the divine will was considered so much 
more efficacious below the earth than above 
it, and why, if the lower waters had no need 
of support, the upper ones could be kept up 
in their place only by a material arch of great 
solidity. May we not also ask him, and the 
whole array of traditional cosmologists, how 
they know that the Hebrews did not think 
of the waters under the earth as vaporous, 
and as usually vaporized to the point of invisi- 
bility like the corresponding waters above the 
earth? Even in the days when Exod. 20. 4 
was written human thought had some degree 
of self-consistency. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE NEWLY INTERPRETED 1 

Few studies in ancient cosmology can more 
entertain or instruct the investigator of to-day 
than a careful comparison of the seven dia- 
grams published as correct pictures of the 
Babylonian universe in the works named be- 
low. 2 No two of the seven agree. Moreover, 
the first represents the Zodiac as at a vast 
distance above the sphere of the fixed stars 
—a proceeding which at the start disarranges 
all ordinary astronomic ideas. Equally un- 
picturable in my imagination is the seventh 
of the series, the world sketched by Radau. 
Again and again have I tried to construct it 
in thought, but every time have failed. Even 
Jensen in his great work gives us for "the 
place of the Convocation of the Gods" (Du-azag) 

1 This chapter was printed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 
for October, 1908, and by courteous consent of the Council of that body 
is here reproduced. 

2 The reader is earnestly requested to turn to these diagrams and to 
note their striking divergences: 

1. Isaac Myer, Qdbalah, Phil., 1888, p. 448. 

2. Hommel, Babylonischer Ursprung der Aegyptischen Cvltur, 1892, p. 8. 

3. Hommel, Aufsatze und Abhandlungen, 1901, Th. iii, 347. 

4. Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonier, 1890, Appendix. 

5. Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, 1892, p. 543. 

6. Whitehouse, article "Cosmogony," Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible. 

7. Hugo Radau, The Creation-Story of Genesis, 1902, p. 56. 
Professor HommePs second is a marked improvement on his first. 

In connection with it he prints a generous reference to the present writer. 

33 



34 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

dnly a pitch-dark cavern in the thin crust of 
his sea-filled hemispherical earth, and has no 
place for Hades but another cavern located in 
the same thin crust and oddly enough far 
above the cave of the gods! 1 Surely there is 
a call for new attempts to think the thoughts 
of these ancient Semites after them. 

For the reconstruction of the Babylonian 
universe we have no less than twelve most 
valuable data derived from the study of ancient 
Babylonian texts. These will now be enumer- 
ated, and that the enumeration may command 
the greater confidence I shall connect with 
each of them one or more references to equiva- 
lent statements by experts of high authority 
in this field. Here follow the data: 

1. In the Babylonian conception of the 
universe the earth occupied the central place. 
Winckler expressly calls the earth "the accepted 
center" of the planetary system of this people. 2 

2. The northern half of the earth was viewed 
as the upper, the southern as the under. The 
former was associated with light and life, the lat- 
ter with darkness and death. Winckler remarks : 
"The South and the Underworld are identical." 3 



1 Jensen's diagram, Anglicized in terminology and much enlarged, may- 
be seen in Worcester's Genesis in the Light of Modern Knowledge, oppo- 
site page 109. 

2 Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der Weltanschau- 
ung und Mythologie aller V biker, von Dr. Hugo Winckler, Leipzig, 1901, 
p. 34. 

'"Identisch ist also Siiden und Unterwelt auch hier wie bei unserer 
kosmischen Ausrichtung der Erdachse." — P. 24. 



THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE 35 

3. The upper or northern half of the earth 
was regarded as consisting of seven stages 
(tupukati), ranged one above another in the 
form of a staged pyramid. Speaking of the 
staged temple of Nippur, Sayce observes: "It 
was a model of the earth, which those who 
built it believed to be similarly shaped, and 
to have the form of a mountain whose peak 
penetrated the clouds." 1 

4. In like manner the antarctic or under 
half of the earth was supposed to consist of 
seven stages corresponding to those of the 
upper half. As Jensen expresses it: "The 
seven tupukati of the underworld are a fac- 
simile of the seven tupukati of the overwork!." 2 

5. Like the quadrilateral temples modeled 



^Gifford Lectures, London, 1903, p. 374. See also Boscawen, in the 
Oriental and Biblical Journal, Chicago, 1884, p. 118. For interesting 
parallels see W. R. Letherby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, London, 
1892. The existence in Egypt of a type of pyramid with sloping stages, 
and the clear traces in India of a conception of the earth as spheroidal 
in figure despite a series of rising zones or retreating mountain-terraces 
upon its surface, suggest that the stages of the Babylonian earth should 
not be mentally pictured as necessarily implying their possession of 
the sharply angular outline presented by a staged temple, or by the 
figure in our diagram. It is quite possible that in Babylonian thought 
the quadrangularity of the earth was largely a conscious and deliberate 
emphasizing of the cardinal points of the heavens and earth, and that 
its pyramidal form in architecture was as conscious and deliberate a 
deviation from supposed reality as are with us the parallel meridians 
and fiat zones of a Mercator's Chart of the World. Moreover, as the 
celestial spheres are of a substance so crystalline as to be absolutely 
invisible to men, so the rising stages of the earth are to be viewed as 
less and less grossly material, until at length all appearance of mate- 
riality vanishes, leaving the highest as invisible (save in the case of a 
divinely sent trance, Gen. 28. 12) as are the heavens in which they 
are lost. 

2 Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, p. 175. 



36 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

after it, the earth of the Babylonians was 
four-cornered. In this particular it agreed with 
the conception ascribed to the ancient Egyp- 
tians, Hebrews, Chinese, and to the Indo- 
Aryans of the Rig-Veda period. 1 

6. In Babylonian thought, Winckler says, 
"there were seven heavens and seven hells." 2 
This belief is one of untraceable antiquity. 
Writing on this subject, Hommel remarks: "The 
idea of the seven heavens seems to go back 
to the beginnings of Semitic culture." 3 

7. Above the seventh heaven was another, 
the "highest heaven," that of the fixed stars; 
called by the Babylonians the "heaven of 
Ami," after the name of the oldest and highest 
of their gods. 4 

8. This eighth heaven was divided by the 
Zodiac into two corresponding portions, an 
upper, or Arctic, and an under, or Antarctic. 
At the pole of the former Ami had his palace 
and throne. 5 



1 Sayce, loc. cit. Also, Encyclopaedia Biblica, ii, col. 1148. C. Puini, 
in Rivista Geograf. Ital., 1895, p. 12. H. W. Wallis, The Cosmology 
of the Rig-veda, London, 1887, p. 112. F. L. Pulle, Cartografi-a deW 
India, 1901, p. 18. 

2 "Was die obere Welt hat, hat auch die untere. Es giebt demnach 
sieben Himmel und sieben Hollen oder Hollenstufen." — Op. cit., p. 34. 
Also, E. Bischoff, Babylonisch-Astrales im WeltbUd, etc., Leip., 1907, 
pp. 28, 29, 34, 36, 40, 104, 156, 161. 

3 Die Astronomie der alten Chaldaer. In Ausland, 1891, p. 381. 

4 Winckler, p. 34. Also, A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte 
des alten Orients, Leipzig, 1904, p. 10. 

5 Winckler, p. 36. Jensen, p. 24. A. Jeremias, p. 27: "Der Sitz 
Ami's ist der nordlich vom Tierkreis gelegene Himmel mit dem Nordpol 
des Himmels als Mittelpunkt. Dort ist sein Thron." 



THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE 37 

9. In Babylonian thought the north pole of 
the heavens was the true zenith of the cosmic 
system, and the axis of the system upright; 
consequently, as among the ancient Egyptians 
and Indo-Aryans, the diurnal movements of 
the sun and moon were regarded as occurring 
in a horizontal plane. Speaking of the Baby- 
lonians, Maspero says: "The general resem- 
blance of their theory of the universe to the 
Egyptian theory leads me to believe that 
they, no less than the Egyptians, for a long 
time believed that the sun and moon revolved 
round the earth in a horizontal plane." 1 

10. Proceeding outward from the central 
earth, the order of the seven known planets 
was as follows: Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, 
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. 2 That their respective 
distances from the earth were not uniform 
was already known. Such at least seems to 
be the opinion of Winckler, and certainly is 
that of Hommel. 3 

11. In order to pass from the upper half of 
the earth to its under half, that is, from the 
abode of living men to the abode of the dead, 
it was necessary to cross a body of water 
which on every side separated the two abodes. 

1 Davm of Civilization, p. 544. Cf. Robert Spence Hardy, Legends 
and Theories of the Buddhists, London, 1866, pp. 85-89 ;L. A. Waddell, 
The Buddhism of Thibet, 1895, p. 78. 

2 Winckler, p. 35. Hommel calls it "die uralte feste Anordnung." 
Aufsatze und Abhandlungen, iii, 375-383. 

3 See Winckler, p. 34. "In immer grosserem Abstand von der Erde" 
is the language of Hommel in his Insel der Seligen, p. 38. 



38 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

This explains the language of Dr. A. Jeremias 
where he says: "When one sails out upon the 
ocean, one finally comes down into the Under- 
world." 1 

12. According to Diodorus Siculus (ii, 31), 
the Babylonians considered that twelve desig- 
nated stars south of the Zodiac stood in the 
same relation to the dead as do the twelve 
corresponding stars north of the Zodiac to men 
still in the land of the living. This representa- 
tion clearly makes the living and the dead 
the residents respectively of antipodal surfaces 
of one and the same heaven-inclosed earth. 
In like manner, in the Creation Tablets 
(V, line eight), Anu and Ea are antipodally 
located gods, the former having his palace 
and throne at the north pole of the heavens, 
the latter his palace and throne at the south 
pole. 2 

Such, then, according to latest scholarship, 
are the fundamental features of the ancient 
Babylonian world-concept. The task of com- 
bining them is simple. One can but wonder 
that there should have been such mistakes 
and such delay in effecting the due adjustment. 
In the diagram prefixed as a frontispiece to 
this volume each requirement of the twelve 



i Op. cit., p. 10. Also, his "Holle und Paradies bei den Babylonier" 
(Der alte Orient, Jahrg. 1, Heft 3), S. 14ff. Also, F. Jeremias, in Chante- 
pie de la Saussaye's Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2d ed., 1905, Bd. i, 
275. Tiele, Histoire Compare" e des Anciennes Religions, p. 177. 

sWinckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipzig, 1902, p. 201. 



THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE 39 

enumerated propositions is fully met. The 
upright central line represents the polar axis 
of the heavens and earth in perpendicular 
position. The two central seven-staged pyra- 
mids represent respectively the upper and 
lower halves of E-KUR, the earth. The seven 
dotted half-circles above the earth represent 
the "seven heavens" of the planets; the cor- 
responding hemispheres below the earth the 
"seven hells." The outermost sphere — the 
upper half cut away, as were the seven heavens, 
to show the interior of the system — is of course 
the all-including starry sphere, the sphere 
girdled by the many-mansioned Zodiac, 1 and 
made scintillant by the appointed astral 
Watchers who keep their patient vigils one 
half above the living, one half above the antip- 
odal dead. 

How wonderful a world-view was this! How 
perfect the symmetries of the system! Its 
duplex center lived on in Pythagorean thought 
as "Earth and Counter-earth." 2 Doubtless it 
influenced Plato when in the Timaeus he said, 
"To Earth, then, let us assign the form of a 
cube." It still lives on in the four-cornered 
earth of the New Testament, and in that 
of the Mohammedan teaching. Its heavens 

>The "lunar mansions" of astrology are all within the Zodiac. 

2 The often misunderstood x^ v aQ d avrixOuv. O. F. Gruppej Die 
kosmische Systeme der Griechen, Berlin, 1851, p. 82. Correctly under- 
stood by Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i, 28, 68. The "double earth" of ancient 
Egyptian cosmography is another parallel. 



40 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

lived on in the "homocentrie" "crystalline 
spheres" of the Greek astronomers, and through 
the influence of Ptolemy's Almagest shaped 
the thinking of all savants, philosophers, and 
poets till the days of Copernicus. Dante's 
heavens are those of Ptolemy, and Ptolemy's 
are those of the ancient worshipers of Anu 
and Sin. Their music is still audible, their 
form still visible, in Milton's Ode to the Nativity. 
But while the presence of this highly mathe- 
matical world-concept is thus traceable through 
millenniums, its origin was among a people 
antedating the Babylonians. A truer name, 
therefore, for the system would be the Pre- 
Babylonian. The East Semites received it 
from their predecessors in the possession of 
the Euphratean valley, the Akkado-Sumerians. 
At least, such is the opinion and the teaching 
of our highest experts. 1 Did the system origi- 
nate among these non-Semitic predecessors in 
the valley? This has been assumed, but no 
man can pretend to know. 

1 H. Zimmern, Die KeUinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3. Aufl., 
1902, S. 349. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC UNIVERSE 
IN THE LIGHT OF THE BABYLONIAN 

In the opening chapters of this book we saw- 
good reason to challenge the correctness of 
the commonly accepted representation of the 
Hebrew heavens and earth. May not the now 
recovered Babylonian world-view help us to a 
better understanding of the conception which 
underlies the thought and language of the 
Old and New Testament writers? 

To my mind the strongest argument in favor 
of the current representation, and therefore 
the strongest assignable reason for denying 
that the biblical universe was substantially 
identical with the Babylonian, is found in 
those biblical passages in which, as in the 
account of Korah and his company (Num. 16. 
31, 32), the earth is represented as opening 
her mouth and engulfing living men, who then 
are declared to have "gone down alive into 
Sheol." Such language harmonizes so well 
with the idea that Sheol is an underground 
cavern, to be reached only through a rift in 
the overarching earth-crust, that Whitehouse 
and Schiaparelli and the rest seem for the 
moment justified in their depictions. As an 

41 



42 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

argument, however, such passages have little 
weight. 

In the first place, it is plain that a rift through 
the solid earth of the Babylonians would as 
effectually carry engulfed men into the under- 
world as would a somewhat shorter rift through 
the upper half of the hollow disklike earth 
presented us by Whitehouse and Schiaparelli. 

In the second place, if Sheol was really be- 
lieved to be an enormous cavern in the bowels 
of the earth, reached in Korah's case by an 
extemporized entrance, where was the ordinary 
and normal entrance for Korah's countrymen 
in general? Barbarians have been known to 
point out cave-mouths supposed by them to 
lead to an underworld, but no biblical writer 
has a hint respecting any such earth-piercing 
path divinely provided for all ghosts descending 
to Sheol. Granting the existence of such a 
path, where was its upper end, its entrance- 
gate? In the territory of which tribe was the 
uncanny rift, the rendezvous of all the newly 
dead? If it was beyond the bounds of the 
Holy Land, to what unhallowed heathen land 
were the pious and unpious ghosts of Israel 
compelled to journey in search of the tunnel- 
mouth through which they could hope to reach 
their long home and be gathered to their 
fathers? Such questions need no answer; they 
belong to a world utterly foreign to Hebrew 
thought. 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 43 

Possibly some one will deny the need of any 
such tunnel in the case of ghosts, and claim 
that according to Hebrew belief the disem- 
bodied spirit in the moment of its disembodi- 
ment received power to penetrate the soil and 
the unrifted rock overarching the Sheol cavity. 
But this is to go quite beyond the evidence. 
Nowhere do the biblical writers claim or imply 
that solid material barriers impose no limita- 
tions upon the free movements of a disembodied 
human spirit. Furthermore, in case the soil 
and every part of the solid earth were as freely 
traversable by disembodied human spirits as 
the present supposition implies, the need of any 
cavern for the assembled and assembling spirits 
in the heart of the earth would be quite done 
away. Matter-filled space would be as availa- 
ble as any other. 

In the third place, the most ancient known 
pictures of a human soul after separation from 
the body represent it as winged, and birdlike. 1 
Illustrations in Egyptian art are numberless. 
Babylonian texts imply the same representa- 
tion. In perfect accord with this idea are the 
words found in the psalm traditionally con- 
sidered the oldest and most impressive in the 
Bible, the ninetieth, wherein we read that our 
fleeting life is soon cut off, but as soon as it is 



1 See G. Weicker, Der Sedenvogd in der alten Literatur und Kunst. 
Eine mythologisch-archaologische U titer suchung. Mit 103 AbbUdungen 
im Texte. Leipzig, 1907. 



44 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

cut off "we fly away." Verily, wings were a 
strange equipment for penetrating the geologic 
strata beneath our feet! 

Finally, if we may trust the exegesis of the 
apostle Paul, his countrymen, like the Baby- 
lonians, considered a passage across the ocean 
the same thing as a descent to the deep abodes 
of the dead. A comparison of Deut. 30. 11-13, 
with Rom. 10. 6-8, shows that he interprets 
the one transit as the perfect equivalent of 
the other. 1 



1 A word may be expected touching rakia, the term translated, or as 
many have already said, mistranslated, in Gen. 1, by the term "firma- 
ment." It would require a book many times larger than the entire 
Pentateuch to contain all that biblical scholars have written in attempted 
explanation of the word. Did it really mean to the writer the visible 
sky conceived of as a solid material vault constructed to "support," 
or to "keep back the waters of the heavenly ocean"? Most have said, 
yes; but many, no. Schiaparelli, as we have seen, pictures the structure 
as double, so also does Radau ; but while Schiaparelli makes both vaults 
celestial in location, Radau makes one celestial, but the other its sub- 
terrestrial counterpart (The Creation-Story of Genesis, pp. 51ff.). Most 
interpreters have described the rakia as a solid; some, however, have 
claimed that it should be conceived of as a "fluid." Some, like Basil, 
seem to describe it as of a substance altogether impalpable and super- 
sensible. O. M. Mitchel translates it "vacuity," and understands it 
to mean the vacuity resulting from the separation of the parts of the 
nebula out of which the solar system was formed and their aggregation 
around the different planetary centers and their common center (The 
Astronomy of the Bible, pp. 190f.). A German contemporary of his, 
Professor J. H. Kurtz, of Dorpat, created much discussion by arguing 
at length, in his book on Bibel und Astronomie (1853), in favor of iden- 
tifying rakia with the atmospheric air enveloping our planet. Long 
before him, however, an English physician, Dr. Samuel Pye, in his 
Mosaic Theory of the Solar or Planetary System (1766), had gone yet 
farther in this direction, and had paraphrased Gen. 1. 6, 7 as follows: 
"And God said, Let there be a firmament, an expanse, an atmosphere, 
in the midst of the waters, that are upon the surface of the earth, and of 
every primary planet, and the waters that by means of these atmospheres 
will be raised and suspended above the waters on their surfaces; and let it, 
on each of them, divide the waters from the waters. And God made 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 45 

Passing now from negative considerations to 
the question, What view of the universe was 
held by the writers of the Old and New Testa- 
ment? six points of fundamental import should 
be noted: 

First. Inasmuch as the Hebrews were younger 
kinsmen of the East Semites and their tribal 
territories in Canaan long under earlier Baby- 
lonian influence, and inasmuch as their earliest 
calendrical terms and adjustments, such as the 



a firmament, or expanse, an atmosphere, to the earth, to every other planet, 
and comet; and (as exhalations proceed from the surface of its body) to 
the sun itself; and divided the waters (or fluid matter) which were under 
the firmament, from the waters, or fluid matter, which were above the 
firmament, on each of them, and it was so" (pp. 12, 13). Besides the 
above interpretations, I have seen it described as a "line," a "circle," 
a "plate," a world-wide surface "without thickness," a "region," the 
"first," the "third," or again the "eighth" of the Ptolemaic spheres, 
and so on. In 1904, Dr. A. Jeremias, in Das alte Testament im IAchte 
des alten Orients, p. 78, identified the rakia with the Zodiac (Tierkreis), 
but in his second edition (1906) he inclines to favor Winckler's lately 
published view (Forschungen, iii, 387), according to which the total 
Earthrealm (Erdreich) is, or rather was, before the Priestly Writer 
forgot himself and got his "ideas mixed," the rakia separating the 
upper and the under waters. This somewhat resembles Radau's view. 
From a reference in Jeremias, I infer that something analogous is to 
be found in J. Lepsius, Das Reich Christi, pp. 227f. (1903), a work 
which I have not seen. If any reader is unable to content himself with 
a free choice from among the foregoing interpretations, he has still an 
alternative remaining, for in three differently edited editions of the 
article in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, sub voce, it is solemnly stated 
that the rakia is a species of power, and (despite Gen. 1. 8) one which 
should be carefully distinguished from the heavens, "the former being 
the upheaving power, the latter the upheaved body." In the same article, 
strange to say, the same writer describes this identical rakia as that 
"in which they" — the sun, moon, and stars — "are fixed as nails, and 
from which consequently they might be said to drop off (Isa. 14. 12)." 
A fast-setting sun, "fixed as a nail" in "the upheaving power" of the 
heavens, would certainly be an interesting object for contemplation ! 
The advent of E. W. Maunder's Astronomy of the Bible (1908) permits 
us to hope that a new and better day is dawning. 



46 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

names of the months, the beginning of the 
year, etc., were of Euphratean origin, there is 
a strong antecedent probability that their 
astronomic and cosmologic ideas also were 
directly or indirectly derived from the Baby- 
lonians (or from the ancestors of both peoples), 
and corresponded to the Euphratean. 1 

Second. The Hebrew use of a plural term 
for the heavens, sometimes intensified to "the 
heaven of heavens," precisely corresponds with 
the immemorial Babylonian usage, and implies 
in the thought of the Hebrew writers a plurality 
of heavens. Professor Salmond, after a recent 
reexamination of the whole question, wrote: 
"In view of the evidence, the most reasonable 
conclusion is that the conception of the heavens 
which pervades the Old Testament and the 
New (not excepting the Pauline writings, though 
Saint Paul mentions only the third heaven and 
Paradise) is that of a series of seven heavens" 2 

Third. The biblical references to the "four 
corners (ywiai) f the earth," and cognate 
expressions, imply a conception of the earth 
corresponding in this particular to the Baby- 

* For an excellent estimate of the influence of Babylonia on Israel, 
see Robert William Rogers, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, New 
York, 1908, pp. 92ff., 140ff., et passim. 

2 Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, ii, 334. Writing of "Paradise," 
the same author says: "There is abundant evidence that the belief in 
a plurality of heavens prevailed among the Jews. But it is doubtful 
whether it was a belief in a threefold heaven. The evidence is rather 
to the effect that the prevailing, if not the only, conception among the 
Jews of our Lord's time was that of a sevenfold heaven." — Hastings, 
Sii, 671. 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 47 

Ionian as above interpreted. Even the "New 
Earth" in the Apocalypse is in the form of a 
foursquare terraced city, whose length and 
breadth and height are equal (Rev. 21. 16). 

Fourth. The Old and New Testament pas- 
sages that contrast the depth of Sheol or 
Hades with the height of the heavens, and 
those which speak of "The Kingdom of the 
Heavens," or of Christ as having "passed 
through the heavens," or of him as being 
"made higher than the heavens" — not to speak 
of others — acquire a new interest and a new 
pertinency the moment they are interpreted in 
harmony with the cosmological views first dis- 
coverable among the ancient Babylonians, but 
later — with only trifling modifications — current 
in the teachings of all the historically known 
Hellenic astronomers. 1 

Fifth. The already noticed equation of an 
over-sea voyage (Deut. 30. 11-13) and a 
descensus ad inferos (Rom. 10. 6-8) is no slight 
indication that in Hebrew thought the relation 
of the upper to the under world was precisely 
the same as in the Babylonian. So in Job 38. 
16, 17, the uninterrupted passage of the poet's 
thought from "the recesses of the sea" to the 

1 On the essentially Babylonian "homoeentric spheres" of Pythagoras, 
Parmenides, Eudoxus, Kallippus, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest, see 
J. L. E. Dreyer, History of Planetary Systems from Tholes to Kepler, 
Camb., 1906, pp. 21, 36, 87, 178, 188, 257, 259, 279, 289, 298ff. S. Op- 
penheim, Das astronomische Weltbild im Wandel der Zeit, Leip., 1906. 
Troels-Lund, Himmelsbild und Weltanschauung im Wandel der Zeit, 2te 
Aufl., Leip., 1906. 



48 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

"gates of death" may well be another indica- 
tion of this habitual association of the two 
realms — just as in Homeric thought the realm 
of Aides ever borders upon that of Poseidon. 1 

Sixth. Philo of Alexandria, the most dis- 
tinguished contemporary of Jesus among Jewish 
teachers (born B.C. 20), regarded the universe 
as made up of the seven concentric planetary 
spheres, together with the all-including eighth 
sphere, and the central earth around which 
all revolved. 2 

On the whole, then, there are excellent 
reasons for believing that the universe of the 
Old and New Testament writers, like that of 
the earliest traceable Semites, was not of the 
"dish-and-cover" pattern, but rather of the old 
upright-axled and poly-uranian type. Professor 
Salmond goes so far as to say, "The evidence 
is all in favor of the affirmative" — that is, in 
favor of the opinion that the conception of a 
series of heavens is found in the Scriptures. 
Then he adds: "But the evidence which bears 
out the existence of the idea of a plurality of 
heavens also favors the idea of a sevenfold series 
of heavens." 3 A study of the apocryphal 
literature only reinforces the evidence. Take 
for an example the Slavonian "Book of the 
Secrets of Enoch." Robert Henry Charles, 

iSee also Job 26. 5; Psa. 69. 15; and Jonah 2. 2, 6. 
2 See James Drummond's article on "Philo" in Hastings, Dictionary 
of the Bible, Extra Volume, p. 200. 

'Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, ii, pp. 321, 322. 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 49 

everywhere recognized as the foremost authority 
on this newly discovered work, remarks: "The 
detailed account of the seven heavens in this 
book has served to explain difficulties in Old 
Testament conceptions of the heavens, and has 
shown beyond the reach of controversy that 
the sevenfold division of the heavens was 
accepted by Saint Paul, and by the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and probably in 
the book of Revelation." 1 The ancient apocry- 
phal treatise known as The Ascension of Isaiah 
describes each of the seven heavens with no 
less particularity. 

Passing to authentic Rabbinical literature 
we find the counterpart to all this; that is to 
say, a clear recognition of the sevenfold division 
of the space below the earth. And, as in the 
Babylonian conception, so also in the Rab- 
binical, each underworld as one descends is 
vaster than the last. And as in the Indo-Aryan 
conception the south-polar demons spend half 
the year in darkness and half in the blaze of 
the sun, 2 so in the Rabbinical the occupants 
of the lowest hell have as torments alternating 
heat and cold, each six months in duration. 
This, of course, helps to identify the location 
of the Rabbinical Inferno as at one of the 
terrestrial poles. In all descriptions of such 



*In Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, i, 711. See also, Charles, The 
Book of the Secrets of Enoch, pp. xxx— xlvii. 
2 The Cradle of the Human Race, p. 199. 



50 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

regions we are apt to meet with details and 
amplifications more or less fantastic, and in 
the present case they are not lacking. The 
Jalkut Rubeni, for example, gives the following: 
"The seven abodes of Sheol are very spacious; 
and in each there are seven rivers of fire and 
seven rivers of hail. 1 The uppermost abode is 
sixty times less than the second, and thus the 
second is sixty times larger than the first, and 
every abode is sixty times larger than that 
which precedes it. In each abode are seven 
thousand caverns, and in each cavern seven 
thousand clefts, and in each cleft seven thousand 
scorpions; each scorpion hath seven limbs, and 
on each limb are one thousand barrels of gall. 
There are likewise seven rivers of rankest 
poison, which when a man toucheth he bursteth; 
and the destroying angels judge him and scourge 
him every moment, half the year in the fire, 
and half the year in the hail and snow. And 
the cold is more intolerable than the fire." 2 

It hardly need be added that the heavens 
of Rabbinical tradition were seven; 3 and that 
"in the Rabbinical point of view, the superb 



1 Gehenna, as well as Sheol, has "seven departments, one beneath the 
other." The Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. v, 217. But in The Chronicles 
of Jerahmeel Sheol is the highest and "Gehinnom" the lowest of the seven 
divisions of the one underworld. Gaster's translation, London, 1899, p. 38. 

a Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. ii, p. 345 (English transla- 
tion, vol. ii, p. 52). 

'Eisenmenger, op. tit., i, 460. See also notes of Wetstein, Adam 
Clarke, or Stanley on 2 Cor. 12. 2. American Journal of Theology, 
January, 1908, p. 99. 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 51 

throne of King Solomon, with the six steps 
leading up to it, was a symbol of the highest 
heaven with the throne of the Eternal above 
the six inferior heavens (1 Kings 10. 18-20). " l 
In the Rabbinical descriptions of the heavens 
and hells one striking feature has often caused 
remark. The two regions are said to "adjoin 
or touch each other" (Jewish Encyclopaedia, 
ix, 517). But if the abode of God is almost 
infinitely above our earth, and the abode of the 
lost as far below, how can the two be said to 
"join."? In this many writers have found 
only contradiction and absurdity. A glance at 
our diagram of the Pre-Babylonian Universe 
removes every difficulty and reveals entire 
consistency of thought. By showing that the 
heavens and hells are simply the upper and 
nether halves of the earth-inclosing spheres of 
the universe, the diagram gives optical demon- 
stration that each heaven and each correspond- 
ing hell must be in mutual contact at every 
point of their equatorial junction. 2 

1 McClintock and Strong, Cyclopaedia, vol. iv, p. 122. 

2 One other feature in Rabbinical cosmography has much perplexed 
modern investigators. Many writers have referred to it; among others 
just lately Dr. A. Jeremias in his ATAO, 2d ed., p. 557n. From Baba 
Bathra, ii, 25b, he quotes the following, but has no explanation to offer: 
"The sky surrounds the earth like Aksadra (encircling three sides, but 
not the north side); and people explain this by saying, On that side 
there is no sky; i.e., it is open, the sky has a hole in it." So long as we 
conceive of the four cardinal points of the compass as lying in the plane 
of our own level horizon, a statement of this kind is, of course, an in- 
soluble enigma. On the other hand, the moment we adjust north and 
south to the zenith and nadir of the heavens, as did the ancient Semites, 
the reason is perfectly clear why in the sky visible to the Hebrews an 



52 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Should any reader desire further light upon 
this particular world-view, he is recommended 
to turn to the article entitled "Hebrew Visions 
of Hell and Paradise/' printed in the Journal 
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, 
in the volume for the year 1893. Therein the 
author, M. Gaster, Ph.D., translates for the 
first time into English a number of ancient 
texts in some of which Moses is represented as 
by God's permission and help making a tour 
of inspection through the seven heavens, the 
hells, and Paradise. Wonderful regions are 
found and beings of incredible dimensions. 1 

Closely related to the Rabbinical world- 
concept is that of the Koran and of the accepted 
expounders of the Koran. This can occasion 
no surprise to anyone who considers the extent 
to which the Koran is a rifacimento of Rab- 
binical ideas and traditions. The hells are 

orifice should be said to be in the north and nowhere else. There only 
could an opening afford a permanent passage from earth to the heavenly 
regions. 

1 A. Wunsche gives a still more recent demonstration of our thesis in 
Ex Oriente Lux, ii, 1906, pp. 113-168. Just after the above was written 
Dr. Erich Bischoff published his admirable treatise, Bdbylonisch-Astrales 
im WeltbUde des Thalmud und Midrasch, Leipzig, 1907. Therein, pp. 39, 
40, he refers to the close neighborhood of heaven and hell in the Rab- 
binical teaching and explains it precisely as I have suggested above. 
Had he represented the upper and lower halves of the earth as antipodal 
counterparts — as he does the two heaven-halves — he would have escaped 
his difficulty in harmonizing the "telluric" hell with the "cosmic" one 
(confessed on p. 39). Moreover, had Orelli, in his criticism of Bischoff 
(Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1905, Nr. 24), understood and explained the 
terraced form of the sky-piercing Babylonian earth, he might much 
more easily have come to an agreement with him as to the unreason- 
ableness of tracing so remarkable a Semitic conception to India, and 
to seven "V egetationsstufen des Himalaya" (p. 156n). 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 53 

seven; and their names, with references to 
Koranic passages, may be seen in Professor 
Palmer's Introduction to his translation of the 
Koran (p. lxx), or in Hughes's Dictionary of 
Islam, article "Hell." 1 The heavens are also 
seven; and if they had been a series of seven 
visible platforms connected by marble stair- 
ways, the lowest of the platforms resting on 
the summit of Mount Sinai and the highest 
standing high above the highest clouds, they 
could hardly have been pictured more realis- 
tically in the thought of the faithful. How 
perfectly acquainted with the supernal regions 
the naive believer felt himself to be, is well seen 
in the accepted account of Mohammed's ascent 
to the seventh, and of his repeated passages up 
and down between the sixth and seventh. 2 In 
the Mishkatu '1-Masbih the story is told as 
follows : 

Whilst I was sleeping upon my side, Gabriel came to 
me, and cut me open from my breast to below my navel, 
and took out my heart, and washed the cavity with 
Zamzam water, and then filled my heart with faith and 
science. After this, a white animal was brought for me 
to ride upon. Its size was between that of a mule and 
an ass, and it stretched as far as the eye could see. The 
name of the animal was Boraq. Then I mounted the 
animal, and ascended until we arrived at the lowest 



1 Hughes adds: "For most of these circumstances relating to hell and 
the state of the damned, Mohammed was in all probability indebted 
to the Jews and, in part, to the Magians, both of whom agree in making 
seven distinct apartments in hell." 

2 See Hughes, s. v. "Mi'raj," p. 251. 



54 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

heaven, and Gabriel demanded that the door should be 
opened. And it was asked, "Who is it?" and he said, 
"I am Gabriel." And they then said, "Who is with 
you?" and he answered, "It is Mohammed." They said, 
"Has Mohammed been called to the office of a prophet?". 
He said, "Yes." They said, "Welcome Mohammed; his 
coming is well.", Then the door was opened; and when 
I arrived in the first heaven, behold, I saw Adam. And 
Gabriel said to me, "This is your father Adam; salute 
him." Then I saluted Adam, and he answered it and 
said, "You are welcome, O good son and good Prophet!" 
After that Gabriel took me above, and we reached the 
second heaven; and he asked the door to be opened, and 
it was said, "Who is it?" He said, "I am Gabriel." It 
was said, "Who is with you?" He said, "Mohammed." It 
was said, "Was he called?" He said, "Yes." It was 
said, "Welcome Mohammed; his coming is well." Then 
the door was opened; and when I arrived in the second 
region, behold, I saw John and Jesus (sisters' sons). And 
Gabriel said, "This is John, and this is Jesus; salute both 
of them." Then I saluted them, and they returned it. 
After that they said," Welcome, good brother andProphet." 
After that we went up to the third heaven, and asked 
the door to be opened; and it was said, "Who is it?" 
Gabriel said, "I am Gabriel." They said, "Who is with 
you?" He said, "Mohammed." They said, "Was he 
called?" Gabriel said, "Yes." They said, "Welcome 
Mohammed; his coming is well." Then the door was 
opened; and when I entered the third heaven, behold, I 
saw Joseph. And Gabriel said, "This is Joseph; salute 
him." Then I did so, and he answered it and said, 
"Welcome, good brother and good Prophet." After that 
Gabriel took me to the fourth heaven, and asked the 
door to be opened; and it was said, "Who is that?" He 
said, "I am Gabriel." It was said, "Who is with you?" 
He said, "Mohammed.". It was said, "Was he called?" 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 55 

He said, "Yes." They said, "Welcome Mohammed; his 
coming is well." And the door was opened; and when 
I entered the fourth heaven, behold, I saw Enoch. And 
Gabriel said, "This is Enoch; salute him." And I did so, 
and he answered it and said, "Welcome, good brother and 
Prophet." After that Gabriel took me to the fifth heaven, 
and asked the door to be opened; and it was said, "Who 
is there?" He said, "I am Gabriel." It was said, "Who 
is with you?" He said, "Mohammed." They said, 
"Was he called?" He said, "Yes." They said, "Welcome 
Mohammed; his coming is well." Then the door was 
opened; and when I arrived in the fifth region, behold, I 
saw Aaron. And Gabriel said, "This is Aaron; salute 
him." And I did so, and he returned it and said, "Wel- 
come, good brother and Prophet." After that Gabriel 
took me to the sixth heaven, and asked the door to be 
opened, and they said, "Who is there?" He said, "I am 
Gabriel." They said, "And who is with you?" He said, 
"Mohammed." They said, "Is he called?" He said, 
"Yes." They said, "Welcome Mohammed; his coming 
is well." Then the door was opened; and when I entered 
the sixth heaven, behold, I saw Moses. And Gabriel 
said, "This is Moses; salute him." And I did so; and 
he returned it and said, "Welcome, good brother and 
Prophet." And when I passed him, he wept. And I 
said to him, "What makes you weep?" He said, "Because 
one is sent after me, of whose people more will enter 
Paradise than of mine." After that Gabriel took me up 
to the seventh heaven, and asked the door to be opened ; 
and it was said, "Who is it?" He said, "I am Gabriel." 
And it was said, "Who is with you?" He said, "Mo- 
hammed." They said, "Was he called?" He said, 
"Yes." They said, "Welcome Mohammed; his coming is 
well." Then I entered the seventh heaven, and, behold, 
I saw Abraham. And Gabriel said, "This is Abraham, 
your father; salute him." Which I did, and he returned it 



56 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

and said, "Welcome, good son and good Prophet." After 
that I was taken up to the tree called Sidratu '1-Muntaha; 
and behold its fruits were like waterpots, and its leaves like 
elephants ears. And Gabriel said, "This is Sidratu 
'1-Muntaha." And I saw four rivers there; two of them 
hidden and two manifest. I said to Gabriel, "What are 
these?" He said, "These two concealed rivers are in 
Paradise; and the two manifest are the Nile and the 
Euphrates." After that, I was shown the Baitu '1-M'amur. 
After that a vessel full of wine, another full of milk, and 
another of honey, were brought to me; and I took the 
milk and drank it. And Gabriel said, "Milk is religion; 
you and your people will be of it." Mtev that the divine 
orders for prayers were fifty every day. Then I returned, 
and passed by Moses; and he said, "What have you been 
ordered?" I said, "Fifty prayers every day." Then 
Moses said, "Verily, your people will not be able to 
perform fifty prayers every day; and verily, I swear by 
God, I tried men before you; I applied a remedy to 
the sons of Israel, but it had not the desired effect. Re- 
turn, then, to your Lord, and ask your people to be 
released from that." And I returned; and ten prayers 
were taken off. Then I went to Moses, and he said as 
before; and I returned to God's court and ten prayers 
more were curtailed. Then I returned to Moses, and 
he said as before; then I returned to God's court, and 
ten more were taken off. And I went to Moses, and 
he said as before; then I returned to God, and ten more 
were lessened. Then I went to Moses, and he said as 
before; then I went to God's court, and was ordered 
five prayers every day. Then I went to Moses, and 
he said, "How many have you been ordered?" I said, 
"Five prayers every day." He said, "Verily, your 
people will not be able to perform five prayers every 
day; for, verily, I tried men before you, and applied 
the severest remedy to the sons of Israel. Then return 



BIBLICAL, RABBINICAL, AND KORANIC 57 

to your Lord, and ask them to be lightened." I said, 
"I have asked him till I am quite ashamed; I cannot 
return to him again. But I am satisfied, and resign 
the work of my people to God." Then, when I passed 
from that place a crier called out " I have My divine 
commandments, and have made them easy to My serv- 
ants.". 



CHAPTER V 

THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 

In the year 1888 an eminent Egyptologist 
published in France and in America his con- 
ception of the world-view of the ancient dwellers 
upon the Nile. Finding it clearer and more 
confidently set forth than any I had previously 
seen, I immediately made it, and the criticisms 
to which at the time I considered it open, the 
subject-matter of a lecture. This was given 
before a class of graduate students in Boston 
University early in 1889. In the "Outline" 
sheets distributed to the auditors illustrative 
diagrams were inserted. From the outline then 
used the following paragraphs are a verbatim 
extract: 

The cosmology of the Egyptians has received almost 
no attention at the hands of professed Egyptologists. 
No treatise on the subject has yet been published. In 
a number of articles on other subjects Maspero has 
incidentally set forth the opinion that the Egyptians 
considered the form of the earth to be that of a flat 
oblong quadrangular slab with Egypt in its center. At 
each of the four corners there was an incredibly high 
post, forked at the top; these four pillars supported an 
immense "slab of iron" which constituted the firma- 
ment of heaven. Above this was a celestial ocean, the 
source of rain. The setting sun in returning to the 
east was not supposed to pass under the earth-slab nor 

58 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 



59 



yet over the heaven-slab, but to slip through a hole 
in the mountain of the sunset; and embarking on a 
horizontal river to float between two parallel semi- 
circular mountain ranges which extend on the same 
general level as the earth-slab from the west point of 
the horizon round beyond the north point to the east 
point. This nocturnal voyage required twelve hours, 
during which time the sun was neither above nor be- 
neath either heaven or earth, but in Douaout, 1 a region 
of darkness to the north of both. 

Here follows a ground plan of the Egyptian earth 
according to Maspero (Fig. A) : 



■~-,--^ 5 




FIGURE A 

Adding now the pillars for 
the heaven-slab, we have the 
following (Fig. B) : 

Adding now the slab and the Douaout, as Maspero 
conceives it, we have the following (Fig. G) : 



FIGURE B 




FIGURE C 
(1) Bakhu, "Mountain of the Sunrise." (2) Appitto. (3) Mountain 
of sunset. (4) Unnamed. (5) Supports of heaven. (6) Egypt at 
center of earth-slab. (7) Iron heaven. 



1 Commonly spelled Duat, or Tuat. 



60 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

To find the fullest exposition, see Revue de FHistoire 
des Religions, Nov. and Dec, 1888, pp. 266-270. For a 
less satisfactory exposition, in English, see his article 
entitled "Egyptian Souls and their Worlds," in the New 
Princeton Review, July, 1888, pp. 23-36. 1 

This interpretation we cannot accept. It is not a 
critical construction of the data of Egyptian cosmology 
as furnished by the texts. ... It is sufficiently refuted 
by the following considerations : 

I. The natural sky is so manifestly concave that no 
people has ever yet been found to believe it to be a flat 
slab, of iron or of any other matter. 

II. The Egyptians had certain designations for heaven 
which expressed its curved form. See Brugsch, pp. 
199, 200. 

III. A people as intelligent as the ancient Egyptians 
in earliest historic ages cannot possibly have believed in 
the literal existence of four wooden or iron sky-props 
taller than the highest course of sun or star, and strong 
enough to sustain an iron slab as wide and long as the 
visible heavens, with an equally extended ocean above it. 



1 "Earth was not to the Egyptians what it is to us, a globe carried 
safely through space by the laws of gravitation; everybody in Egypt 
knew that it was a fiat, oblong, quadrangular slab, more like the upper 
board of a table than anything they could imagine. It was surmounted 
by a flat iron roof stretching at some distance from it and supported 
by four strong pillars which prevented it from falling and crushing 
what was underneath. Thus the world was like a two-storied house, 
the various parts of which might be connected, as they are in our houses, 
by a staircase, or ladder. The Egyptians supposed that there was 
somewhere in the West a tall ladder which went up straight from earth 
to heaven. . . . Nobody was allowed to climb it unless he knew the 
password, and, even after giving it, those poor souls were in danger of 
never reaching the top who were not helped by the hand of some piteous 
divinity. Once on the solid floor of the firmament, they traveled north- 
ward until they came to the brink of the Boreal Ocean ; there they found 
the ferryboat or the ibis of Thot, the judge Osiris and his assessors, the 
Islands of the Happy, where they settled forever and ever amongst the 
indestructible stars, as indestructible as any of them." — From the above 
cited article in the New Princeton Review. 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 61 

IV. The four heaven-pillars of the Egyptian mythology 
are never located by the Egyptian texts, as according 
to Maspero they would have to be, in four opposite 
directions from Egypt, but always in the remotest north. 
See Paradise Found, p. 74, and Brugsch's statement that 
I have there quoted. This fact alone is fatal to Maspero's 
entire interpretation. 

V. In all Egyptian pictures where Shu is represented 
as supporting heaven upon his upstretched hands, he is 
placed directly under its middle or center. This in 
Maspero's interpretation would make middle Egypt his 
proper mythological standing ground. His proper sta- 
tion, however, according to all mythological texts, is in 
the highest north — in fact, at the terrestrial pole. See 
Brugsch, pp. 208-210. Compare the chapters in Paradise 
Found which treat of the "Navel of the Earth" and 
"Navel of the Heavens," and of the "Pillars of Atlas." 

VI. Nearly every eminent Egyptologist except Mas- 
pero holds that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted 
with the true figure of the earth, and that they had all 
the astronomical knowledge necessary to enable them to 
orient pyramids and temples to a hair's breadth, and to 
harmonize the solar and lunar years. Brugsch, Chabas, 
Lieblein, and Lefebure are of this opinion. Lieblein, in 
fact, confidently maintains that the texts show that the 
ancient Egyptians already understood and believed the 
heliocentric theoiy of the universe. See also Rawlinson's 
Herodotus (Am. ed.), vol. ii, pp. 278, 279. 

At the time the foregoing demurrer was 
written and placed in "manifolded" copies in 
the hands of my students, no man was esteemed 
a higher authority in the peculiar cosmography 
of Egypt than Maspero. It would be difficult 
to name a higher to-day. His exposition of 



62 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

the Egyptian universe in the writings above 
named, and in his Etudes, remained unchal- 
lenged by any professor of Egyptological studies. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that as recent 
and reliable a cosmologist as J. L. E. Dreyer, 
in his History of Planetary Systems, still 
describes the world of the Egyptians as "a 
large box," and their stars as "suspended by 
cords." In the year 1895, however, in his 
work entitled The Dawn of Civilization, Maspero 
himself introduced into his earlier teachings 
some modifications, and presented a picture of 
his own devising to illustrate his riper view of 
the Egyptian cosmos. This picture we here 
reproduce for the study of the reader. 

His description in this revised form reads as 
follows: "They imagined the whole universe to 
be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, 
whose greatest diameter was from south to 
north, and its least from east to west. The 
earth, with its alternate continents and seas, 
formed the bottom of the box; it was a narrow, 
oblong, and slightly concave floor, with Egypt 
in its center. The sky stretched over it like 
an iron ceiling, flat according to some, vaulted 
according to others. Its earthward face was 
capriciously sprinkled with lamps hung from 
strong cables. Since this ceiling could not re- 
main in mid-air without support, they invented 
four columns, or rather four forked trunks of 
trees, to uphold it, similar to those which main- 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 



63 



tained the primitive house. But it was doubt- 
less feared lest some tempest should overturn 
them, for they were superseded by four lofty 
peaks rising at the four cardinal points and 
connected by a continuous chain of moun- 




THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 
(According to Maspero.) Section taken from Hermopolis. 
barque of the sun on the celestial river. 



To the left, the 



tains. . . . These were not supposed to form 
the actual boundary of the universe; a great 
river, analogous to the Ocean-stream of the 
Greeks, lay between them and its utmost limits. 
This river circulated upon a kind of ledge 



64 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

projecting along the sides of the box a little 
below the continuous mountain chain upon 
which the starry heavens were sustained. On 
the north of the ellipse, the river was bordered 
by a steep and abrupt bank which soon rose 
high enough to form a screen between the river 
and the earth." 

The modifications here introduced are slight 
and of doubtful merit. The sun is made to 
set, not at a horizon level with the Sahara, but 
at one only "a little below" the level of the 
suspended stars in the zenith of the observer. 
Who can believe that the builders of the pyra- 
mids, watching a sunset, saw any such non- 
existent mountain heights to the west of them? 
And who can believe that any people capable 
of identifying to-day's sun with the sun of 
yesterday, and capable of inventing a real boat 
and a hidden world-river for the purpose of 
accounting for his reappearance in the east 
after his disappearance in the west, would be 
ignorant of the fact that the moon and stars 
also travel across the sky to their setting, and 
that consequently they cannot possibly be 
cabled or chained to an immovable sky-canopy 
of iron? It is hard to be patient with an 
author who can soberly ascribe such incredible 
crudities to the finders and the users of the 
Sothic year. 1 



1 It seems quite time that some qualified expert should give us a 
thorough study on "The Nile of Heaven." How utterly unlike the 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 65 

The latest writers on Egyptian science and 
religion — Breasted, Budge, Petrie, Erman, Stein- 
dorff, Von Strauss-und-Torney, Wiedemann, 
Spiegelberg, Schack-Schackenburg, Naville, and 
the rest — give us no noticeable improvement on 
Maspero's world-picture. 1 The cosmology which 
they express, or more commonly content them- 
selves with implying, is in most cases simply 
inconstruable in thought. And since all our 
translators of the original Egyptian texts are 
men who neither expect nor search for any 
intelligible world-concept in those texts, it is 
not to be anticipated that other investigators, 
unable to decipher technical terms and to test 
conjectures, will soon be able to help our 
baffled minds. However, now that we have 
discovered some unsuspected unity and ration- 
ality in the cosmological thought of the ancient 
Babylonians and their predecessors, may we not 
hope that at an early date some young and 
uncommitted Egyptologist will feel impelled to 
investigate the question whether the Baby- 



celestial Nile of Maspero's picture is the Nile of heaven in the following 
text given in Erman's Religion of the Egyptians, p. 68: "Thou didst 
create the Nile in the depth and dost lead him hither at thy pleasure to 
give nourishment to men. Thou didst create the life-nourishment of 
all distant lands and didst set a Nile in heaven that it may flow down 
to them ; he forms waves upon the mountains like an ocean and moistens 
their fields. How beautiful are thy decrees, thou Lord of Eternity. 
The Nile of heaven didst thou give over to the strange peoples and the 
animals of the desert, but the Nile from the depth comes for Egypt." 
1 Wiedemann ascribes to the Egyptians a belief in three Sheols : one 
above the earth, one on the earth, and one under the earth. Die Toten 
und ihre Reiche im Glauben der alien JSgypter, Leipzig, 1900, S. 19. 



66 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Ionian world-idea may not prove something of 
a clue to the Egyptian? 

Light is already coming, and as of old from 
the east. The fact that Lepsius found what 
seemed to him evidence of a plurality of heavens 
in Egyptian thought is encouraging. Many 
things in Brugsch favor the supposition that 
the Egyptian cosmos resembled the prehistoric 
Euphratean. For example, he finds that the 
stars are over the heads of the inhabitants of 
Hades, 1 and this precisely answers the last of 
the twelve requirements in Babylonian cos- 
mology. If, as the Assyriologists unanimously 
assert, a cosmological symbolism underlay the 
pyramidal structures of Babylonia, why not 
also those of Egypt? And if, as Sayce says, 
it was the four-cornered and pyramidal earth 
which was intentionally imaged in sanctuaries 
in the valley of the Euphrates, why not also 
in those others in the valley of the Nile? 2 
Winckler affirms that the culture of Babylonia 
and that of Egypt are no more to be regarded 
as distinct than are the civilizations of two 
modern civilized states. 3 In the same passage 

1 Religion und Mythologie der alten Mgypter, p. 204. 

2 0. D. Miller, "The Pyramidal Temple," in the Oriental and Biblical 
Journal, Chicago, vol. i, pp. 169-178. Also, Boscawen, in the same, 
1884, p. 1 18. Also other references in Cradle of the Human Race, p. 228ff . 
Flinders Petrie does not fail to remind us that under its sloped casing 
the Great Pyramid of Cheops is a seven-staged one. See The Academy, 
London, April 18, 1891. 

3 Himmels- und Weltenbild, S. 30, 31. For a fuller and more technical 
treatment of these matters, see "Astronomisch-Mythologisches," in his 
Altorientalischen Forschungen, Bd. ii. Also, Hommel, Grundriss der 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 67 

he shows that their astronomic divisions of 
world-time were identical. Even Maspero, as 
we have seen, notices the singular agreement 
found in the most ancient thought of the two 
peoples with respect to the horizontal motion of 
the sun. Each people applied to its under- 
earth — that far-off original of Dante's pendent 
Purgatorio Mount — terms strikingly descriptive 
of the inverted pyramid of our diagram. Among 
the terms applied to the Egyptian Amenti are, 
"mountain," "pyramid," "hidden mountain," 
"inverted precinct." Nor should it be forgotten 
that, corresponding to the Semitic expression 
"heaven of heavens," Naville has found in a 
Litany of Ra the counterpart expression, "The 
Hades of Hades." 1 Furthermore, as in Mithra- 
ism, and in that survival of Babylonian lore 
which scholars call Sabeanism, so in the oldest 
Egyptian teaching, the "Ladder of heaven," 
according to St. Clair, had just seven steps. 2 
Corresponding hereto, in the Book of the Dead, 
chapter 144, we read of "seven halls" in the 



Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients, 2d. Aufl., 1904, S. 113ff. 
Alfred Jeremias, Der alte Orient und die dgyptische Religion, in the 
scientific supplement of Leipziger Zeitung, No. 91, 1905; new ed., Leip., 
1907. 

1 The Amenti of Amenti. 

2 George St. Clair, in Biblia, Meriden, March, 1905, p. 371. When the 
Mithraic ladder had eight rounds, reference was expressly made to the 
heaven of the fixed stars as answering to the eighth. Franz Cumont, 
Mysteres de Mithra, Brux., 1899, i, 117. On the Egyptian Heaven- 
ladder, see Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i, 167f., 490; ii, 92, 241. 
As it afforded room for three abreast, a remarkable parallel may be 
found described and pictured in Sir Monier-Williams, Buddhism, pp. 
414-419. 



68 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

underworld. The latest published studies by 
English as well as by Continental experts re- 
confirm the traditional view of the derivation 
of the Egyptian culture from the valley of the 
Euphrates. 1 

It is the opinion of the present writer that 
in the end it will be found that, whatever the 
crudities and confusions of the magic texts and 
popular conjurations, the astronomy and cos- 
mology of the learned priests in Egypt through 
all traceable ages corresponded in every essential 
with the astronomy and cosmology taught in 
the Euphratean valley. When that time of 
insight shall come, let due honor be paid to 
Professor Eduard Roth, who in the face of an 
unbelieving generation of Egyptologists boldly 
affirmed that the doctrine of an eightfold 
series of heavens, seven of them planetary and 
one sidereal, all concentric and geocentric, was 
the genuine Old-Egyptian doctrine. 2 Even he 
was anticipated by Guigniaut, a French savant 
whose learning entitled him to rank with the 
best cosmologists of his age. 3 

Since writing the foregoing I have been 
gratified to notice that in his recent course of 
lectures in this country Professor Steindorff, of 
Leipsic, has all unconsciously set forth in a 
single sentence what I am representing as hav- 

1 Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of Recent Discoveries, by L. W. 
King and R. H. Hall, London, 1907, pp. 32-44. 

2 Geschichte unserer abendlandischen Philosophic, Bd. i, 167, 199; ii, 88. 
3 Creuzer-Guigniaut, Religions de I'Antiquiti, vol. i, 488n. 



THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE 69 

ing been in all likelihood the time original 
world-view of the Egyptians. In reporting 
what seems to him a chaos of discordant con- 
ceptions of the cosmos, he incidentally remarks 
that according to some texts, "Under the earth 
is supposed to lie a counter-earth, which is made 
exactly like the earth and the heavens 17 — our 
earth and heavens he means of course — u and 
which is peopled by the dead 111 Let us hope 
that the worthy successor of Ebers may soon 
find in this conception of an underworld which 
is the perfect antipodal counterpart of our 
overworld the solution of many a problem. 2 

i Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, 1905, p. 35. 

2 Long ago Pierret translated an oft-occurring Egyptian expression: 
"la double terre." Mythologie igyptienne, Paris, 1879, p. 74. On this 
Gerald Massey remarks: "It has been assumed by some Egyptologists 
that the 'two earths,' or 'the double earth,' were limited to the division 
of space into south and north by the passage of the sun from east to 
west. But in the making of Amenti the one earth was divided into upper 
and lower, with a firmament or sky to each, and thus the earth was dupli- 
cated." Ancient Egypt, London, 1907, p. 411. (Italics mine.) Here 
the true conception seems clearly expressed, but he just misses the true 
relation of the two earths as antipodal, for on page 410 he places the 
lower and its firmament "within the earth"; a mistake which appears 
again on page 413, in his criticism of Maspero's description of the uni- 
verse. On page 347 he even misses the true relation of the celestial 
hemispheres in passages where they are clearly pictured by reversed 
signs as upper and lower, and where their right relation has been sug- 
gested by Renouf and others. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE HOMERIC UNIVERSE 

It is not greatly to the credit of Western 
scholarship that from the time of the Revival 
of Learning in Europe until well into the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century, no inter- 
preter of Homer suggested as a permissible 
conjecture the idea that the earth of the Iliad 
and Odyssey is an unsupported sphere or 
spheroid in the center of the starry sphere. 
When, in the year 1881, this idea was presented, 
first in the New York Independent, and a little 
later in the Boston University Year Book, 
volume ix, Dr. L. R. Packard, professor of the 
Greek language and literature in Yale Univer- 
sity, wrote: "If it is true, all our books and 
maps are wrong, and we must admit that all 
scholars have been mistaken in their under- 
standing of the ancient records." The general 
incredulity showed that fuller proof was needed. 
Accordingly, in 1885, in my work on The Cradle 
of the Human Race, I gave a more extended 
exposition of the entire subject, an exposition 
based upon a critical examination of every 
cosmographical datum found in the Homeric 
poems, and upon a study of all explanations 
which previous interpreters of repute had pub- 

70 



THE HOMERIC UNIVERSE 71 

lished — the whole constituting a treatise of 
more than fifty octavo pages. In this it was 
shown that if the cosmographical statements 
and implications in Homer are to have any 
harmonious interpretation, the interpreter will 
have to proceed upon the theory that the earth 
of the poems is a sphere. So convincing was 
the demonstration that many eminent scholars 
on both sides of the Atlantic at once accepted 
the new doctrine. 1 Indeed, since its publica- 
tion, the writer has not seen one attempt to 
answer his arguments or to reestablish by 
fresh evidence the former teaching that the 
Homeric earth is a "flat disk," having within 
it, or to the west of it on a level with its central 
plane, a cavern-like realm of Hades. 

Of course, an interpreter may say, with 
Professor William Cranston Lawton, "Dr. War- 
ren's hypothesis accounts for the statements 
of Homer more clearly than any other," and 
still decline to find in the hypothesis indubitable 
proof that the Greeks in Homeric times, or 
even that one of their bards, held the conception 
of a spherical earth. Professor Lawton him- 
self, with characteristic frankness, remarks: "In 
my own mind I vacillate between accepting it 
and incredulity as to Homer's having any 
clear geometrical ideas and theories at all." 2 



1 See "Reception Accorded to the True Key to Ancient Cosmology, 
in the Appendix to The Cradle of the Human Race, pp. 450-457. 

2 Art and Humanity in Homer, New York, 1896, p. 183. 



72 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Of course, also an interpreter may say, as 
many have, We are not concerned to find an 
Interpretation that harmonizes all the cosmo- 
logical statements of the poems, and for the 
reason that any discrepancies discoverable in 
those statements are welcome evidence in sup- 
port of our thesis that the poems are composite 
productions, written by many different authors, 
and reflecting the cosmological views of dif- 
ferent epochs. The author of our latest and 
best American handbook of Homeric antiquities, 
Professor Seymour, does not join this com- 
pany. While admitting the poet's use of earlier 
material, he says: "These poems have such 
unity as cannot easily be explained if they are 
the work of several poets/' And he refers his 
readers to my interpretation as affording a way 
in which Homer may not only be harmonized 
with himself, but also harmonized with Pindar. 1 
To reproduce in this place my Homeric 
studies of 1885 would give to our present 
chapter a disproportionate length and signifi- 
cance. Suffice it, therefore, to say that they 
presented from the Iliad and Odyssey what is 
to many convincing evidence, not only of a 



1 Life in the Homeric Age, by Professor Thomas Day Seymour, New- 
York, 1907. Professor Seymour not only commends Friedrich Blass's 
admirable defense of the unity of the Homeric poems, but also adds: 
"The stamp of a great personality seems to lie upon each. But during 
recent years scholars have been so busy in searching for proofs of the 
different authorship of different parts of the poems that they have 
overlooked indications of unity of purpose, of spirit, and of execution" 
(p. 15). 



THE HOMERIC UNIVERSE 73 

spherical earth, but also of a plurality of heav- 
ens. 1 Furthermore, a clear reference to the 
upright axis of the heavens and earth was 
found in the pillar of Atlas. 2 A unitary cos- 
mical water-system closely corresponding to that 
of the Indo-Iranians was brought to view. 3 
New light was thrown upon the nightly journey 
of the sun from west to east. 4 Finally, Hades 
was identified as an inverted country, beneath 
our earth yet not within it. 5 

In compensation for the brevity of this sum- 
mary, one of the discussions referred to is 
reproduced in the Appendix to the present 
volume. Also a paper on "Homer's Abode of 
the Living/' printed in the Boston University 
Year Book of 1885. 

Comparing now the Homeric universe with 
the far-off Babylonian, we discover in the 



1 The Cradle of the Human Race, pp. 338-350. 

2 Pp. 350-358. On page 191f. reference was also made to the thor- 
oughly Babylonian doctrine of Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, and other 
Ionic philosophers, as to the primeval coincidence of the terrestrial 
zenith with the celestial pole, and the horizontal motion of the sun in 
its daily circuits around the perpendicular axis of the universe. This 
feature of early Greek teaching is well brought out in the article on 
"Astronomy" in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquites 
Grecques et Romaines, Paris, 1S75. 

3 Pp. 254-256, 333-335. 
« Pp. 336-338. 

6 Pp. 467-487. That this Homeric conception of the underworld, as 
identical with the southern hemisphere of the earth, was still current 
centuries after the age of Homer, is evident from a remarkably clear 
cosmographic passage in the pseudo-Platonic Dialogue of Axiochus 
(371A). See comments in J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 
1905, p. 110. Unwarrantable interpolations by the translator render 
the version of the passage by George Burges (in Bonn's Plato, vi, 53) 
quite worthless. 



74 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

former no mention of "seven" (or eight) as the 
number of the heavens, nor is there mention 
of the earth as four-cornered. On the other 
hand, however, we do find, in both systems, 
(1) the geocentric feature, (2) the plural heavens 
feature, 1 (3) the perpendicular world-axis, (4) 
the earth-encompassing Ocean-stream, and (5) 
the outre mer Hades, under yet not within the 
earth. Taken together, the five correspondences 
are certainly striking evidence of a common 
origin of the two world-views. 

The most noticeable point of disagreement 
is perhaps this, that while in Babylonian 
thought the earth terminates in the second 
heaven, and furnishes a palace floor for Shamash 
in his own particular sphere, it seems in the 
Odyssey to terminate in Kalypso's isle, at the 
"navel of the sea." Curiously enough, how- 
ever, the seeming disagreement includes a very 
remarkable common feature; for, like as the 
Babylonian symbol of Shamash shows the four- 
faced world-fountain from which all waters 
proceed, so in Kalypso's isle the same super- 
natural fount pours its fourfold flood toward 
four opposing points of the horizon. 

Possibly another obscure point in Homer's 
cosmos may yet receive at least a partial illu- 
mination from the Babylonian. Interpreters 



1 Tilak goes yet farther and says: "The Greek mythology speaks of the 
seven layers of heaven over one another." — The Arctic Home in the 
Vedas, 1903, p. 291. 



THE HOMERIC UNIVERSE 75 

have never quite known what to make of 
Homer's two world-thresholds, the one above 
and the other underneath his earth. These 
cannot be dismissed as the momentary fancy 
of a single poet, for they figure in Hesiod as 
well. How would they fit into the Babylonian 
world-view? 

Perfectly. In our diagram we have seen that 
the great world-highway for gods traveling 
through the celestial spheres was called "The 
Way of Anu." Corresponding to this, beneath 
the earth, was "The Way of En-ki, or Ea." 
Along this latter w^ere the seven world-gates 
successively passed by Ishtar in her descent to 
visit the Queen of the Nether World. In the 
Journal of the American Oriental Society, in 
my first article on the Babylonian and pre- 
Babylonian cosmology, I suggested that the 
OZam-doors of Psalm 24 were the celestial 
counterparts of those passed by Ishtar; and 
this suggestion was unhesitatingly indorsed by 
Professor Sayce. But if such were the two 
series of world-doors, the one high above the 
earth, and the other as deep beneath it, the 
upper and under "thresholds" mentioned by 
Homer and Hesiod would perfectly fit the first 
or the last of the doors in each direction. 1 

Originally, other agreements between the 
Homeric and the Babylonian world-view may 



1 The upper series of these world-doors is clearly and correctly con- 
ceived of by J. A. Stewart in his Myths of Plato, p. 351. 



76 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

well have existed; agreements which, at a later 
period, were gradually lost in the successive 
editings of the poems by redactors schooled in 
the later systems of Greek astronomy and 
cosmology. In any case, it is reasonable to 
conjecture that, long anterior to the Homeric 
age, the Greeks received their cosmology, as 
they did their alphabet, from Asiatic neighbors, 
who represented, and in their commercial and 
political intercourse diffused, the ideas and the 
teachings of the earlier Babylonian and pre- 
Babylonian culture. The Father of History, 
himself a Greek, did not hesitate to say that 
his countrymen "received from the Babylonians" 
even their division of the day into twelve hours 
and their instruments for accurately measuring 
them. 1 

Scarcely had I laid down my pen after writing 
the foregoing sentence when a new monthly 
issue of the Edinburgh Review of Theology and 
Philosophy came to hand. In it, fresh from 
the pen of the well-known translator of the 
Code of Hammurabi, Dr. C. H. W. Johns, of 
Cambridge University, stood the following: 
"What evolutionary process lay behind the 



1 Herodotus, ii, 109. That is a testimony of antiquity; here is one of 
to-day: "When Thales, the Ionic philosopher, astounded the Ionic- 
Greek world by foretelling a solar eclipse, he borrowed his wisdom from 
the Babylonians, as Pythagoras drew his philosophy, with its symbolism 
of numbers, from the same Semitic source." Professor J. A. Craig, in 
Winckler's History of Babylonia, New York, 1907, p. 143. On the far- 
reaching influence of the Babylonians over Greek culture see Muller's 
Handbuch der Massischen Alterthumsurissenschaft, vi, 453-457. 



THE HOMERIC UNIVERSE 77 

Babylonian religious thought is lost for us in 
the mists of prehistoric time. We may indeed 
amuse ourselves by speculating as to its pro- 
gressive development, but we shall find it more 
useful to estimate exactly its nature and poten- 
tialities as the finished product, which alone we 
can know, and can now know so fully. It spread 
throughout the world, with local variations; 
Egypt and early Arabia, Elam and Iran, Persia, 
India, China, the Mycenaean culture, Etruscan 
and early American, prehistoric Europe, North 
Africa, Spain, and Crete show such marked 
traces of it that it may fairly be regarded as 
common to mankind. The only excuse for 
calling it Babylonian is that in Babylonia we 
find its oldest presentation, and that the clearest 
and fullest ; while astronomy is so fundamentally 
its ground-stuff that the home of astronomy 
must have the credit of its production. It is 
a philosophy of the cosmos — a religion . . . 
written on the sky itself, like the revelation 
Hume demanded." 1 

In such language something of the enthu- 
siasm of a cuneiform decipherer is doubtless 
to be seen, but where to find a really scholarly 
present-day estimate of the influence of Baby- 
lonian and pre-Babylonian ideas upon human 
thought and human history expressed in terms 
more sober, I scarcely know. Certainly the 



1 Review of Theology and Philosophy, Edinburgh, vol. iii, p. 78. 



78 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

latest estimates presented by German scholars 
are often less moderate rather than more. 1 



J F. Delitzsch, Bdbd und Bibd. Winckler, Die Babylonische Kvltur in 
ihren Beziehungen zur unsrigen. A. Jeremias und H. Winckler, Irn 
Kampfe urn, den Alten Orient ; Wehr- und Streitschriften, Leip., 1907. C. 
Fries, "Babylonische und griechische Mythologie," in Neue Jahrb. fur 
das klassische Altertum, ix, 689fi\; "Untersuchungen," in Beitrdge zu 
alten Geschichte, iv, 227ff. ; and "Appdl," in the Nationalzeitung, Beilage 
of Oct. 5, 1906. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 

In any attempt to determine the earliest 
world-view of the East Aryans the safest method 
is doubtless to begin with the oldest conception 
of the universe definitely set forth in Hindu 
or in Old Persian literature, and from this to 
work backward and upward in the interpreta- 
tion of any cosmographical data presented 
only incidentally and fragmentary in sources 
of an earlier date. Pursuing this course, one 
must first give attention to the world-concept 
set forth in the Surya-Siddhanta, a Sanskrit 
treatise mentioned with other astronomical 
works at least fourteen hundred years ago. 

In this work the earth is described in express 
terms as "a globe," unsupported in empty 
space, central in its relation to all heavenly 
bodies, and with its polar axis — like the Baby- 
lonian — perpendicular in position. At its upper 
or northern pole an extremely lofty mountain 
lifts itself high into the heavens, while at the 
southern or under pole a corresponding moun- 
tain projects downward an equal distance. 
The former is represented as the mountain of 
the gods {sura), the latter as the mountain of 
the demons (asura). The two are the opposite 

79 



80 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

ends of one stupendous material mass which, 
as a kind of core, extends directly through the 
earth from highest to lowest point. 1 A girdle 
of oceanic waters surrounds the globe at the 
equator, separating the upper from the lower 
hemisphere. On or near the equator, equidis- 
tant from each other, are four notable cities 
which belong respectively to four large divisions 
of the upper hemisphere called "varshas." In 
consequence of the perpendicular position of 
the polar axis, the plane of the movements 
of the sun and moon around the earth is 
necessarily horizontal. North is synonymous 
with up, and south with down; yet the author 
fully understands that "up" and "down" are 
wholly relative terms; and he expressly states 
that "Everywhere upon the globe, men think 
their own place to be uppermost." 2 

Here, then, a thousand years before the days 
of Columbus, we have a perfectly clear-cut 
presentation of the earth as spherical, or rather 
spheroidal, in figure. Considering the age and 
country in which it appears, one must pro- 



1 The name here given to this earth-core is Meru, but in other Sanskrit 
writings this name is almost invariably restricted to the upper end, that 
is, to the "Mountain of the gods," otherwise known as Su-Meru, that is, 
Meru the Beautiful. On the great antiquity of the word Meru, see 
Cradle of the Human Race, p. 183 ; also p. 236. 

2 See Surya Siddhanta, tr. by Ebenezer Burgess, with notes by W. D. 
Whitney, New Haven, U. S. A., 1860. Also the translation by Pundit 
Bapu Deva Sastri, Calcutta, 1861. — Sloka 53, chapter xii, reads as 
follows: "Everywhere upon the globe of the earth men think their own 
place to be uppermost ; but since it is a globe in the ether, where should 
there be an upper, or where an under side of it?" 



THE INDO-IRAXIAN UNIVERSE 81 

nounce the concept of great interest. Though 
strictly Indian, it cannot essentially misrepre- 
sent the Iranian conception, for in this also 
we find, with other correspondences, an upright 
world-axis, and the two antipodal polar moun- 
tains: Sacred Hara-Berezaiti in the North, and 
Arezur, dark mount of demons, in the South. 

The Surya Siddhanta, as we have seen, 
incidentally alludes to four of the nrythological 
"varshas" into which the surface of the upper 
hemisphere was supposed to be divided. This 
leads to the inquiry: How many such divisions 
were supposed to exist, and what were their 
names? This double question is fully an- 
swered in Sanskrit and Iranian documents of 
unknown antiquity; and as the number given 
in the Iranian tradition, seven, is the same 
as in the Indian, the evidence is strong that a 
sevenfold division of the northern or upper 
hemisphere was held and taught at a time 
prior to the separation of the primitive Indo- 
Iranian stock into its later Hindu and Persian 
branches. The further fact that in the two 
gradually differentiated languages the names of 
the individual divisions bear no resemblance 
to each other seems good evidence, so far as 
it goes, that neither people, in some period 
subsequent to their separation, borrowed its 
scheme from the other. 

The Iranians called their geographical divi- 
sions "keshvares." The names and respective 



82 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

locations of the seven are given in well-known 
Avestan texts; also their relation to the Holy 
Mount. Like the varshas, the keshvares were 
supposed to be separated from each other by 
stupendous mountain ranges impassable by man. 
In both systems, the Persian and the Hindu, 
the highest and divinest division was the one 
out of whose center rose the heaven-piercing 
Mountain of the Gods. The productions and 
scenery of this region were little short of heav- 
enly. Its form in both systems was that of a 
perfect square. The Iranians called it Kvaniras, 
the Indians Ilavrita. In studies published in 
the year 1885/ the present writer gave diagrams 
showing the agreements and disagreements of 
the two mythological maps. These diagrams 
were the first ever attempted on a polocentric 
projection. After examining them and the 
accompanying exposition, Professor F. Spiegel, 
foremost of Iranists then living, wrote as 
follows: "So far as the argument moves within 
the circle of my studies, I can assure you of 
my perfect agreement. Your exhibition of 
the arrangement of the Indian dvlpas and 
Iranian keshvares has essentially corrected my 
own unclear ideas on this subject. Also of 
the correctness of your opinion respecting the 
cosmical water system of the prehistoric Indians 
and Iranians I am perfectly convinced." 
Thus far we have occupied ourselves with 

i The Cradle of the Human Race, pp. 152, 159. 



THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 83 

the earth's upper hemisphere merely; how now 
was the under hemisphere pictured in Indo- 
Iranian thought? 

Notice, first of all, the perfect symmetry of 
the two halves of the upper hemisphere which- 
ever way we may imagine it divided by a 
vertical plane passing through its axis. Imagine 
the face of a mariner's compass painted on the 
horizontal top of holy Hara-Berezaiti, or of 
Su-Meru, and then let the division by the 
vertical plane be on the line marked north 
and south, and each half of the divided hem- 
isphere would be a perfect counterpart of the 
other. Let it be on the line marked east and 
west, and again each half would be a perfect 
counterpart of the other. Even on a line 
connecting the northeast and southwest, or the 
northwest and southeast angles of the moun- 
tain, the result would be the same. This fact 
suggests that, in a world so symmetrically 
constructed as this, we should antecedently 
expect to find that a plane halving the globe 
on the line of the equator would in like manner 
show the southern half to be a perfect counter- 
part of the northern. The fact that in the 
Surya-Siddhanta the two polar mountains are 
described as opposite and perfectly similar ends 
of one and the same outcropping earth-core, 
suggests the same idea of geographic cor- 
respondence throughout the two hemispheres. 
This antecedent expectation is further strength- 



84 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

ened when it is noticed that in the same treatise 
the parallelism is carried so far that a south- 
polar star is placed as far below the south-polar 
mount as the north-polar star is above the 
Mountain of the Gods. The full confirmation 
of the expectation seems to come when we dis- 
cover that, at least in Indian thought, the 
divisions of the under hemisphere were in 
number precisely the same as the varshas of 
the upper hemisphere, namely seven; and that 
while these underworld divisions were called 
patalas, nothing in the etymology of the name, 
or in the extant descriptions of the regions, 
is in the least inconsistent with the require- 
ments of the law of perfect symmetry else- 
where found prevailing throughout the system. 
But if this law holds, the seven patalas, in 
form and collocation, must be exact counterparts 
of the varshas; only, like the polar mountain 
about which they are grouped, inverted in 
"position. In no case is it permissible to picture 
them as dark caverns in the heart of the earth, 
as so many writers have done. The Vishnu 
Purana (bk. ii, ch. v) and the Mahabharata 
(Udyoga Parva, sect, xcviii) describe them as 
"excellent regions," as surpassingly beautiful, 
and as illuminated by our circling sun and 
moon. In the Story of Suparaga 1 we read of 
a voyage which a merchant ship made to one 
of the patalas. Upon the surface of the earth, 

1 Speyer, The Jatakamala, pp. 126, 127. 



THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 85 

therefore, and not within it, they must have 
been located. 

Passing now from the earth to the regions 
above and below it, we find named and described 
in the sacred books of the Indians seven heavens, 
including Brahma's, above and adjacent to the 
central earth. Corresponding to these we also 
find seven subcelestial hells. It is true that 
the Code of Manu speaks of twenty-one hells, 
but as Professor Hopkins, of Yale, well re- 
marks: "The oldest Purana, the Markandeya, 
has but seven, a conception older than Manu's, 
or the later lists of thousands. The Padma 
Purana has also seven hells." 1 The same num- 
ber of heavens and hells is traceable in the 
Avestan literature, 2 and we may therefore 
safely infer that the untraceably ancient con- 
ception of seven concentric planetary spheres 
revolving about an upright axis of earth and 
heaven was an essential part of the prehistoric 
Indo-Iranian world-idea. 

The "dvlpas" now demand our attention. 
In the cosmography of the Puranas we are 
given elaborate accounts of seven parts of the 



1 The Religions of India, p. 443, cf. 478. Already "in the Rig- Veda 
the heavens, the earth, and the lower regions are all conceived as divided 
sevenfold." — Bal Gangadhar Tilak. 

s "Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens," remarks Darmesteter 
in his Introduction to the Vendidad, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, 
p. lx. In the Bundahish, ch. xxviii, the abodes of the demons are so 
correlated with the seven planets as to show that they are of the same 
number (S. B. E., vol. v, 114). Even in the literature of the Jains we 
find the seven-staged heaven. (S. B. E., vol. xlv, p. 222.) 



86 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

universe denominated dvipas. 1 What and 
where were these? The word has been ex- 
plained by Sanskrit etymologists as signifying 
"between waters." Accordingly, Indianists 
have usually translated it "island." Every 
island is certainly "between waters." The 
question arises, then, Where, and what, are 
these seven islands of the Indo-Aryan world? 

Light begins to dawn when we discover 
that they are all concentric and geocentric. 
Remarkable islands! 2 But are they flat con- 
centric rings like those surrounding the planet 
Saturn? So say most modern scholars. Indeed, 
I know of no dissentient authority. Books 
have been issued with the picture of a target- 
board consisting of a bulPs eye and six or 
seven surrounding rings, as a true diagram of 
the Hindu universe. Even Thibaut in his 
right scholarly treatise gives us nothing better. 3 
Can this be correct? Are the surfaces of the 
seven islands, like the rings of the target-board, 
in a common plane? In other words, are the 

1 Their names are: Jambu, Plaksha, Salmali, Kusa, Krauncha, Saka, 
and Pushkara. The Vishnu Purana adds : "They are surrounded severally 
by seven great seas — the sea of salt water (Lavana), of sugar-cane juice 
(Ikshu), of wine (Sura), of clarified butter (Sarpis), of curds (Dadhi), of 
milk (Dugdha), and of fresh water (Jala). Jambu-dvipa is the center 
of all these; and in the center of this is the golden mountain Meru." 

2 Dr. Whitehouse might easily claim that dvipa should be translated 
firmament, for in his view of Gen. 1. 6 the one function of a firmament is 
to serve as a separating barrier "between waters" above and below. 
This would at once give us seven firmaments as a feature of the Indo- 
Aryan world. 

3 See Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Alterthumskunde t 
1889, p. 21. 



THE INDO-IRAXIAX UNIVERSE 87 

islands of a common height? The Puranic 
writers say, No. On the contrary, their respec- 
tive heights, measured from the horizontal 
plane of the earth's center, seem to follow 
some law of progression, arithmetic or geo- 
metric. How, then, are we to view them in 
their relation to each other? 

In a prize essay, written by Babu Shome, a 
native Hindu, and printed in the Asiatic Re- 
searches as long ago as 1849, is found a state- 
ment which may prove to be the key to the 
total Indo-Iranian system. It presents a con- 
ception of the cosmos fascinating in interest — 
one far more complex and highly developed 
than Western scholars have ever credited to 
the Hindu of any age. At the same time it is 
very reassuring to remember that the author 
of the essay was not seeking to gain credit for 
his countrymen, or for their prehistoric ances- 
tors. On the contrary, the title he gave to 
his essay was, "Physical Errors of Hinduism." 
He had become a Christian, had become ac- 
quainted with the astronomic and geographic 
science of the Western nations — in fact, had 
become a teacher in a Christian college — and 
the whole aim of his treatise was to expose 
the utter untenableness and irrationality of the 
orthodox Hindu teachings in the realm of 
science. Furthermore, his representation of 
the Hindu teaching of his time is the more 
trustworthy from the fact that he bases it, 



88 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

not on literary products of distant times, but 
on the authentic teaching of the leading pundits 
then living in Calcutta. 

The universe-conception set forth by Shome 
as fit only for scornful repudiation is one which, 
if it had been found in a dialogue of Plato, 
would long ago have been world-famous as a 
supreme creation of poetic or mythopoeic imag- 
ination. It would also have been hailed by 
all competent commentators as a vastly more 
convincing proof of the influence of Pythagorean 
teachings upon Plato than any we now find 
and prize in the Dialogues that have reached 
us. The task of presenting the conception in 
words is far from easy. 

First of all, one must recall to mind the 
Indo-Aryan earth (Jambu-dvipa), with its up- 
right polar axis, its upper and under polar 
mountains, its seven symmetrically arranged 
varshas in the upper hemisphere, all separated 
by boundary ranges of mountains of cosmic 
proportions; its seven symmetrically arranged 
patalas in the under hemisphere, all also sep- 
arated by boundary ranges of cosmic propor- 
tions: each hemisphere in these respects the 
exact counterpart of the other. Next, one 
must conceive of Plaksha as a yet larger globe, 
also upright as to its polar axis, but including 
in the center of its capacious interior Jambu- 
dvipa with all its varied populations. This 
new globe must, furthermore, in its divisions 



THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 89 

everywhere correspond to Jambu-dvlpa — hem- 
isphere to hemisphere, varsha to varsha, patala 
to patala, boundary range to boundary range. 
In it the inhabitants must be taller than those 
of Jambu, their lives longer, their powers 
more godlike. 

Then at double the distance of Plaksha from 
Jambu one must think of a vastly greater 
globe including in the center of its capacious 
interior both the others, and answering to them 
in its divisions— hemisphere to hemisphere, 
varsha to varsha, patala to patala, boundary 
range to boundary range throughout. This is 
Salmali, the third of this wonderful series. Its 
inhabitants must notably outshine and outlive 
the inhabitants of Plaksha. 

Again, far out beyond, above and beneath 
Salmali must be imaged Kusa, and as before 
the number, shape, and mutual relations of its 
varshas and patalas must precisely correspond 
to those of the inner dvipas respectively. To 
this in like manner the remaining fifth, sixth, 
and seventh must one by one be added, each 
following the same law of subdivision, each 
removed from the last by twice the distance 
of the last preceding; each filled with suitable 
mythologic populations ; until with the seventh, 
the all-including Pushkara, the series is com- 
plete. With this the mental picture of the 
world -whole lacks but one final feature, the 
almost infinitely remoter loka-loka, the star- 



90 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

studded shell of Brahma's primal universe-egg. 
In such a universe a mathematic mind would 
find its paradise. In it a right line in any 
direction from the center point of Jambu-dvlpa, 
if sufficiently produced, would pass through 
an identically shaped and bounded varsha, or 
patala, in each of the seven concentric spheres. 
Conversely, to close our description as Babu 
Shome closes his: "The seven divisions in each 
of the continents (dvipas) are separated by 
seven chains of mountains and seven rivers, 
lying breadthwise, and placed at such inclina- 
tions in respect to one another that if a straight 
line be drawn through any chain of mountains 
or rivers and its corresponding mountains or 
rivers on the other continents, and produced 
toward the central island (Jambu-dvlpa), it 
would meet the center of the earth." 1 

This incomparably complete world-concept 
the just quoted author contemptuously dis- 
misses as "a monstrous picture of geographic 
nonsense." Might it not more fittingly be styled 
the consummate flower of all mythological 
world-making, ancient or modern? 

What can have been its origin, what its history? 



1 Asiatic Researches, vol. xi, p. 411. In the following expression of the 
doctrine of celestial and terrestrial correspondences we seem to find a late 
Persian survival of the older cosmological idea: "Whatever is on earth 
is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in the [celestial] 
sphere. While that resplendent thing (the prototype that is in the 
sphere) remaineth in good condition, it is well also with its shadow."— 
Desatir, The Book of Shet, quoted in Upham's History and Doctrine of 
Buddhism, p. 21. 



THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 91 

Before this question every science dealing 
with the past is silent. That such a concep- 
tion of the universe cannot have been a modern 
or a mediaeval product of Indian musing is 
absolutely certain. It shimmers through the 
ancient Vedas, wherein we read of the seven 
heaven fortresses cleft asunder by Indra, and 
of the " seven-bottomed ocean" below. 1 That 
it antedated the rise of Buddhism and Jainism 
seems clear from the differing conceptions and 
misconceptions of it found in the earliest 
extant documents relating to these largely 
illiterate sects. 2 That its essential features ante- 
dated the separation of the East Aryans into 
Iranians and Indians is well-nigh demonstrated 



1 Bergaigne, La Religion Vidique, ii, 140. In the Vedic texts the idea 
that the earth is a flat disk "nowhere occurs." — Zimmer, Altindisches 
Leben (Prize Essay), Berlin, 1879, p. 359. 

2 It is surely not strange that a cosmos so complex as this should have 
been misconceived by mendicant monks. No map can correctly picture 
it. With only his staff for a pencil, and the level ground for a drawing 
board, the best an ancient teacher could do was to mark out seven 
concentric circles as an equatorial section of the dvipas, and require his 
pupil to learn their names and the names of the beings that peopled 
them. Or perhaps he sometimes would fill his seven concentric tracings 
with water and let these rings represent the sea-like spaces between the 
dvipas so that the intervening earth-rings might represent the more 
solid dvipas themselves. Even without such a prompting to misunder- 
standing, it would not be strange if the uninstructed or half-instructed 
should often have come to conceive of the dvipa-world as a series of 
seven islands, ringlike in shape, concentric, each (except the innermost) 
flat, and in a single horizontal plane. Such seems to have been a common 
imagination among the Buddhist monks. Through these it was grad- 
ually spread over a large part of southeastern Asia, though here and 
there traces of something more adequate to the original thought are 
discoverable. Unfortunately, this "target-board" picture of Indian 
cosmography was early communicated to the European public, and is 
still accepted as the original and orthodox system of Hindu teaching. 



92 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

by the number and character of the corre- 
spondences traceable between the cosmologies 
of the two peoples. In both we find the seven 
heavens with their respective regents, the Zodiac 
of twelve signs, the sevenfold division of the 
earth, the antipodal mountains at the two 
poles, and a unitary cosmic water-system in 
each case starting from and returning to a 
point directly above the sacred Mountain of 
the North. The seven concentric spheres 
certainly carry us back to ancient Babylon, as 
do also the names of the Iranian months. 1 
Furthermore, the correspondences in Indian 
thought of sphere to sphere, and of all to the 
terrestrial center-sphere, are but a fuller and 
more luxuriant development of the parallels 
found and often remarked upon in the Baby- 
lonian thought of heavenly and earthly regions. 2 
In a paper in the Appendix to this volume 



1 "From the most powerful nation of the ancient Semitic world, not 
from kindred India, came the system of terminology of the Zoroastrian 
months." — Louis H. Gray, "Origin of the Names of the Avesta Months," 
in American Journal of Semitic Language and Literature, 1904, p. 201. 

2 "Grundlegend fiir das Verstandniss altbabyloniseher Himmels- und 
Weltkunde ist die Erkenntniss, dass jeder Begriff, jeder Untertheil in 
den verschiedensten Welttheilen wieder ein entsprechendes Spiegelbild 
haben muss. Luft-, Erd- und Wasserreich der unteren Welt — unsere 
Erde — haben ihre Gegenstiicke in den oberen, am Himmel, und innerhalb 
dieser finden sich wieder dieselben Untertheile, so dass wie im Maass und 
Gewicht die kleinen Theile immer die grossen wiederholen. Jeder Theil 
bildet wieder einen Mikrokosmos fiir sich." — Hugo Winckler, Altorien- 
talische Forschungen, Bd. iii, 1, S. 179. Winckler, however, like the 
Indo-Iranian scholars, has failed to see that the marked correspondences 
between the Upperworld and the Underworld are to be pictured in 
thought as resulting simply from the antipodal location of the upper and 
under halves of the cosmic whole. 



THE INDO-IRANIAN UNIVERSE 93 

I have noted twenty striking agreements be- 
tween the Indo-Iranian and the prehistoric 
Euphratean world-pictures. A stronger con- 
firmation of Hermann Oldenberg's conjecture 
that the Indo-Iranians prehistorically borrowed 
from the Babylonians, or Akkadians, seven 
deities, representing the sun, the moon, and 
the five remaining planets, could hardly be 
desired. 1 

As a not inappropriate close of the present 
chapter I will here give an illustration of the 
help which I venture to hope our new inter- 
pretation of the Babylonian world-view may 
yet afford in the interpretation of certain dark 
and difficult passages in Sanskrit and Avestan 
texts. In the Jaiminiya-Upanishad-Brahmana 
occurs a most puzzling statement touching the 
mutual local relations of Jambu-dvipa and 
Plaksha. Years ago it seemed to me utterly 
unintelligible. It reads: "The Navel of the 
Earth lies one span" — I am following Thibaut's 
translation — "one span to the north of Plaksha." 
Thibaut speaks of the strangeness and interest 
of the passage, but can give no explanation. 
No Indianist to my knowledge has ever at- 
tempted to give one. No interpreter accepting 
the prevailing view of the Indian cosmos can 
hope to find a rational meaning in the state- 
ment. Proceeding according to the "target- 
board" world-map, the farther one proceeds "to 

i Die Religion des Veda, Berlin, 1894, pp. 192-195. 



94 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

the north of Plaksha" the farther one is from 
the Navel of the Earth, and indeed from the 
earth as a whole. But the moment one looks 
at our diagram of the Babylonian world the 
puzzling text is no longer puzzling. In The 
Cradle of the Human Race it was shown that 
in the ancient literatures the term "the Navel 
of the Earth" ordinarily signifies the northern 
terrestrial pole. This, however, in the pre- 
historic world-view, is at the level of the north 
pole of the second heaven, and therefore one 
interval, or span, to the north of the north pole 
of the first heaven, which latter belongs to 
Plaksha. The baffling statement is now as 
luminous as the heavens to which it takes us. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BUDDHISTIC UNIVERSE 

Buddhism, as everybody knows, is a special 
outgrowth of antecedent Brahmanical thought 
and teaching among the Hindus. Naturally, 
therefore, its cosmology is but a modification 
of that of the Hindu teachers before and at 
the time of Gautama, the Buddha. 1 Of its 
deviations from the parent system the following 
are the most worthy of notice: First, its extrav- 
agant multiplication of heavens beyond the 
sixth; second, its substitution of eight for seven 
as the standard number for the Narakas (hells) ; 
third, its transformation of the four equatorial 
varshas of the Puranic earth into fantastically 
shaped islands located at four respectively oppo- 
site points in the seventh or outer sea; fourth, 
its gradual ignoring of the four sacred World- 
rivers prominent in the earlier Hindu teaching 
and its resulting final loss of the cosmic water- 
system of the Puranas. 

As to the first, the parent system in its 

1 The Hindu cosmology which in Buddha's time was considered ortho- 
dox went into new and fantastic developments of its own; so that even 
in the Puranas, our chief sources of information, there are many confused 
and contradictory teachings. So great is this confusion that we cannot 
now identify with certainty any but the most fundamental features, and 
affirm that they beyond question had a place in the Hindu world-concept 
at a date as early as that of the rise of Buddhism. 

95 



96 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

enumeration of the heavens was accustomed to 
stop with the seventh, that of Brahma, the 
highest of Hindu gods. In the books of the 
Buddhists, however, we now find in place of 
the one heaven of Brahma "sixteen of formed 
Brahmas and four of formless Brahmas," making 
with the original six below the Brahma-loka, 
twenty-six heavens in all. Moreover, of the 
countless world-units (sakwalas) in the countless 
aggregate which fills all space, every one has 
this precise series of six and twenty heavens. 

The second of the enumerated points of 
divergence is noted by Professor Hopkins in 
his work on The Religions of India (p. 443), 
but neither he nor any other writer known to 
me has suggested what seems the most probable 
explanation of the disparity. The eighth hell 
(Avichi) is given such exceptional dimensions, 
and is placed at such an exceptional distance 
from the world-center, and is otherwise so 
differentiated from the nearer seven, that it 
seems spatially related to the others precisely 
as the eighth nether hemisphere is to the other 
seven in the Babylonian world-concept. It is 
not improbable, therefore, that the difference 
in the two enumerations results from the 
Buddhists including in their count an under- 
world which, as a sacred appanage of the perfect 
world of Brahma, seemed to the Brahmanists 
too holy to be here included. 

As to the third point, I know of no non- 



THE BUDDHISTIC UNIVERSE 97 

Buddhistic Indian document in which anything 
is said of the four great islands, or "island- 
continents/' in the outermost of the seven 
concentric seas. 1 In Buddhist cosmography, 
however, these are exceedingly important por- 
tions of the universe. One of them, Jambu- 
dvipa, is the home of the present human race. 
The one on the side of Meru opposite to us 
bears the name "Uttarakuru" ; which name 
shows that the island is merely a transformed 
and translocated varsha of the older system. 
The triangular shape of our own island sug- 
gests, if it does not show, that it is in like man- 
ner a transformed and translocated "Bharata" 
(India) ; to which has now been transferred the 
name (Jambu-dvipa) formerly applied to the 
total body made up of the seven varshas. 

The fourth of the enumerated deviations is 
easier to explain than any of the others. The 
central teachings of the Buddha rendered it 
impossible for his followers to ascribe saving 
efficacy to baths in the heaven-descended Gunga 
(the Ganges) . Very early, therefore, in Buddhist 
circles the traditional belief in the sanctity of 
these divine waters must have been left behind. 
But with the passing of that belief must also 
have passed the traditionary belief in that 
elaborate water-system of the world in which, 

*In one passage in the Mahabharata (Roy, vi, 10, p. 20) the four 
equatorial varshas are, it is true, called islands, but they are still left 
close "beside Meru." The passage is further interesting from the fact 
that it expressly equates Bharata and Jambu-dvipa. 



98 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

according to the Puranas, all waters start from 
and return to the quadrifrontal headspring of 
the sacred Ganges, conceived of as high in the 
heavens. In the end, the indifference of the 
Buddhist peoples to burial in sacred rivers 
became so marked that Sir Monier-WilUams 
mentions it as one of the observed contrasts 
between Hindu and Buddhist communities. 

But noteworthy as are the divergences of 
Buddhistic cosmology from the parent system, 
the features common to both are still more 
significant. The following are some of these 
points of agreement: First. In each system the 
axis of Great Meru is the axis of the world. 
Second. In each the north-polar top of this 
indescribably glorious world-mountain lifts itself 
to the level of the second heaven, that of 
Sakra (Indra). Third. In each the heaven of 
Yama is the third. Fourth. In the parent 
system the heaven of Brahma is the seventh 
and last, in the Buddhistic his are the seventh 
and all the superadded. Fifth. In each system 
are found the seven concentric seas, and the 
seven concentric lands. Sixth. In each the 
revolutions of the sun and moon about the 
earth are in a horizontal plane. 1 Seventh. In 
each, every heaven and hell and intermediate 

1 "It is not permitted to deviate the breadth of a hair from what the 
great Buddha, in his bana, has revealed; and especially not from his 
system that . . . the sun has its horizontal course over our heads."— 
Karetotte, High Priest of Ceylon, in Dr. Edward Upham's Buddhism in 
Ceylon, London, 1829, p. 85. 



THE BUDDHISTIC UNIVERSE 99 

region has a mythologic population appropriate 
to its biologic and other conditions, and in that 
population every individual is capable of reach- 
ing by processes of reincarnation any and every 
other place in the universe. Eighth. In the 
Buddhistic world-view the relation of the Patalas 
to the Narakas appears to be identical with 
that which we found in the Puranic teaching. 
Finally, in each system the respective abodes 
of the gods and demons are antipodal, the one 
being at the north-polar summit of Meru, the 
other at its south-polar counterpart. 1 

Other points of agreement and divergence 
will doubtless occur to professional Indianists. 
I could myself mention others; but I think of 
none as important as these. The two world- 
pictures have never been compared and con- 
trasted with adequate care. Many years ago 
I conversed and corresponded with Professor 
Max Mtiller, of Oxford, on the desirableness 
and the promise of such a comparative study, 
and at one time he hoped to see it undertaken 
by one of his gifted pupils. Unfortunately, to 
this date, the desideratum remains unsupplied. 
Indeed, I have never seen in any tongue a bare 
enumeration of the agreements and differences 



1 "The Asuras or Daityas dwell under the foundations of Mount Meru, 
as far underneath the surface of the earth as their great enemy Indra 
is above it. In short, if he may be supposed to live at the zenith, they 
live at the nadir, and their battlefield is on the slopes of Meru." — Sir 
Monier-Williams, Buddhism in its Connexion with Brahmanism and 
Hinduism, London, 2d ed., 1890, p. 219. 



100 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

as extended as the utterly inadequate one 
above. May some master of Sanskrit and Pali 
soon give us the light and guidance needed! 

As to graphic representations of the Buddhist 
universe, two perhaps are worthy of the reader's 
attention — chiefly, however, because of their 
unlikeness not only to each other, but also to 
the prehistoric world-picture of the ancient 
Babylonians. The one is found on the cover 
of BeaFs Catena of Buddhist Scriptures (Lon- 
don, 1871), the other in Giorgi's Alphabetum 
Tibetanum (Rome, 1762, p. 472) / The unlike- 
ness of the two is very striking. In the one, 
for example, the dvipas are represented as 
concentric circles, in the other as concentric 
squares. One cannot easily see how the one con- 
cept could ever have grown out of the other; on 
the other hand, however, it is perfectly easy to 
understand how both can well be variations of 
the one older prehistoric world-view, variations 
evolved in centuries of transmission. 

In the Appendix to the present volume a 
paper, entitled "The Mandala Oblation/' pre- 
sents a description of the Buddhist universe in 
some of its more fantastic details. The con- 
trast between the baselessness of these details 
and the profound significance of the Oblation 
is one of the most striking things to be found 
in any of the ritual observances of mankind. 

? This latter picture is reproduced in Waddell's Buddhism in Tibet r 
London, 1895, p. 79, and in Adolf Bastian's Ideate Welten, Berlin, 1893* 



CHAPTER IX 

RECOVERED TRACE OF TWO LOST SPHERES 

If the Babylonian, or, better, the pre-Baby- 
lonian, world-view as here understood lies back 
of all our oldest mythologies, it is evident 
that the scholars of the future have before 
them many and most fascinating tasks. One 
of these relates to the earth's nearest neighbor- 
world, the moon. 

All modern interpreters of ancient references 

to the moon have gone upon the assumption 

that by the words "the lunar sphere/' or "the 

lunar world/ ' an ancient writer or singer always 

meant the moon which we see waxing and 

waning in the nocturnal sky. But if now, in 

addition to our visible moon, there was in 

ancient thought an invisible one, a lunar sphere 

a thousand times vaster, inclosing in itself the 

whole earth and all the clouds above and below 

the earth, it becomes for the interpreter of 

ancient literatures a most important problem 

to determine in every instance to which of the 

two lunar spheres his author in any particular 

expression may be referring. And, inasmuch as 

in this same all-antedating world-view the solar 

sphere is immensely vaster than the sun that 

rises in the east and sets in the west, a parallel 

101 



102 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

necessity arises for discriminating between these 
two bodies whenever we find an ancient writer 
making reference to the movements or domains 
of a solar god. 1 

No student need be told that to make 
the proposed discriminations, and especially to 
demonstrate their correctness in every instance, 
is not likely to prove easy. The interpretation 
of myths, as competent judges know, is about 
the most difficult and baffling of all the duties 
that face the investigator of antiquity. Rarely 
can a large group of scholars agree even as to 
the nature of myths in general, or as to the 
principles to be considered as regulative in 
their interpretation. The published expositions 
of a single myth are often so discrepant and 
contradictory that one feels almost ready to 
unite with those who pronounce all scholarly 
effort in this field a simple waste of time and 
labor. Particularly difficult is the interpreta- 
tion of topographical and cosmographical myths. 
They reach us in forms and in mutual relations 
far removed from the primordial. As to possi- 
ble unities of such myths, it is natural to 
expect to find the most elaborate and complete 
mythological world-pictures where the mythical 
world-rulers and world-tenants are most numer- 



1 A learned correspondent obligingly calls my attention to a passage in 
Plutarch, where in two consecutive sentences there is mention of the 
invisible earth-inclosing "lunar sphere," and of the visible earth-attending 
"moon." The passage is in the explanation of the sistrum, in Isis and 
Osiris, 63. 



TRACE OF TWO LOST SPHERES 103 

ous — that is, in systems and among peoples in 
which polytheism has found its completest 
expression. Facts justify this antecedent ex- 
pectation. But as all the greatest polytheisms 
of antiquity seem to have included ideas and 
cults originally local, the world-picture of each 
composite empire or people is at a very early 
time itself a composite one, a syncretistic 
product with indetectable variations in detail, 
and with indetectable blurrings in the mass. 
Then it is to be remembered that all the great 
polytheisms of the early ages were later and 
in some cases repeatedly subjected to the 
influence of profoundly pantheistic thought and 
teaching and, in this way, to further modifica- 
tion of details and to further blurring of the 
resulting total. That the product of such a 
process maintained through millenniums, as in 
the case of the Egyptians, should at last defy 
analysis as effectually as the dream of a hasheesh 
smoker, ought not to occasion surprise. 

Despite these considerations, however, there 
is a possibility that our proposed discriminations 
between the lunar sphere and the visible moon, 
and between the solar sphere and the visible 
sun, may prove to be of service. In any case 
the students of early human thought should 
give them a fair trial. Even in the most con- 
fused and baffling of all fields, that of the 
Egyptian mythology, I should be glad to see 
the method of attempting such discriminations 



104 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

put on trial. I am encouraged by the outcome 
of my first experiment, an attempt to deal with 
the problem of the location of Tuat. 

Among Egyptologists this problem is often 
characterized as peculiarly difficult. 1 As the 
name of some region of the world, the word 
Tuat is found in the very oldest of Egyptian 
texts. As Budge correctly states, it is ordinarily 
translated "Underworld." Opposing this view, 
H. O. Lange says that Tuat was "a dark space 
above the stars." Renouf, on the contrary, 
expressly states that it was "below the earth." 
Steindorff says, "underneath the earth." Mas- 
pero, Budge, Mallet, and others assure us that 
in reality it was neither beneath the earth nor 
above it. It was an imaginary extramundane 
region, north of the earth and on the level of the 
Egyptian horizon, but no part either of heaven 
or of the earth. No wonder that many have 
frankly pronounced the question insoluble, and 
that Budge and Steindorff express thejbelief that 
the Egyptians of the historic period had them- 
selves lost the original meaning of the term. 

In their descriptions of the region our highest 
living authorities are equally conflicting. Budge, 
of London, writes: "Through the valley of the 
Tuat runs a river, which is the counterpart of 
the Nile in Egypt and of the celestial Nile in 



1 "E* ist sehr schwierig, sich eine richtige Vorstellung von der Duat zu 
machen." — H. O. Lange, in Chantepie de la Saussaye's Rdigionsge- 
schichte, Bd. i, S. 222. 



TRACE OF TWO LOST SPHERES 105 

heaven, and on each bank of this river lived a 
vast number of monstrous beasts, and devils, 
and fiends of every imaginable kind and size, 
and among them were large numbers of evil 
spirits which were hostile to any being that 
invaded the valley/ ' For such a region we 
would naturally look in one of the lowest of 
the hells. 1 But if before beginning our search 
in that quarter we turn to Erman, of Berlin, 
we find this same Tuat described in these words: 
"A kingdom of light, the dwelling-place of the 
gods, who traveled with the happy dead, 'on 
those beautiful ways where the glorified travel/ " 
For such a region we would naturally look in 
one of the highest of the heavens. One eminent 
Hibbert lecturer, alluding to the Tuat water 
on which the sun-god voyages the twelve hours, 
calls it "the heavenly river," yet on the self- 
same page, and only fourteen lines further on, 
with no apparent consciousness of the incon- 
gruity, styles it "the infernal river." Reviewing 
all that has been written on this topic, the 
student is inclined to exclaim with Shakespeare, 

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!" 

Despite all the conflicting opinions, however, 
there are several important points on which 
nearly all recent investigators now seem to 
agree. They may be summed up under eight 



1 Budge elsewhere calls it "the blackest hell." — The Egyptian Soudan, 
ii, 17. 



106 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

heads, as follows: First. The nightly journey of 
the sun from the place of his setting to the 
place of his rising is neither above nor beneath 
the earth, yet lies in this elusive land of Tuat. 
Second. This twelve-hours , journey is conceived 
of as in every part horizontal. Third. It is 
furthermore semicircular. Fourth. The move- 
ment of a barque sailing a semicircular course 
over water represents the Egyptian idea of this 
solar journey. Fifth. The waterway passed over 
by the barque is pictured in thought as lying 
between two parallel mountain ranges which 
like semicircular walls hold the waters in their 
place. (See Fig. C, on page 59, above.) Sixth. 
During the voyage the sun-god has the Egyptian 
earth lying some distance away on his right 
hand, but beyond and distinct from the more 
southerly of the two mountain walls which 
bound the waterway over which he is sailing. 
Seventh. The sun-god does not enter the land 
of Tuat proper immediately on sinking below 
the horizon of Egypt, but only after making 
one hour's journey and passing through the 
nearer of the two parallel semicircular mountain 
ranges. 1 In like manner the twelfth hour of 
the voyage is not in Tuat proper, but is spent 
in passing from Tuat proper to the eastern 
horizon of Egypt. 2 Eighth. During the voyage 

i Maspero gives the technical name of the opening in the mountain and 
translates it "the Slit." Elsewhere he calls it "the Mouth of the Cleft." 

2 This passage from Tuat to Bakhau is represented as serpentine in a 
very peculiar sense. ''Twelve gods tow the boat, not over a river, or 



TRACE OF TWO LOST SPHERES 107 

in Tuat proper the sun-god has personal inter- 
course with both gods and demons. 

Eureka! The Tuat problem is solved! The 
solution must already be clear to every careful 
reader. Turn to the diagram of the Babylonian 
or pre-Babylonian world-view. In it the noc- 
turnal path of the sun answers to every require- 
ment: 1. It is neither under the earth, nor yet 
above it. 2. It is in every part horizontal. 3. 
It is semicircular. 4. Movement on it is like 
that of a barque sailing a semicircular course 
over water. 5. The concentric solar and lunar 
spheres, or rather the portions from the west- 
point around northward to the east-point, give 
us the two parallel mountain ranges of the 
Egyptian picture. 6. As during the voyage Ra 
has the Egyptian, so Shamash has the Baby- 
lonian earth lying at some distance away on 
the right hand, but beyond and distinct from 
the more southerly of the two mountain walls 
which bound the waterway over which he is 
sailing. 7. Observing daily that the sun-god's 
da}^- journey was in a wholly different plane 
from that of the supposed night- journey, the 
Egyptians seem not unnaturally to have imag- 
ined that he required an hour after sinking 
below the western hills to get back into Tuat, 
and again an hour in the morning to make his 

over a serpent or serpents, but completely through a serpent." — Budge, 
i, 257. See Lanzone, Dizionario, tav. vii. E. Amelineau agrees with 
Budge that the passage is through the serpent and not along his back. 
Revue de VHistoire des Religions, tome lii, pp. 26, 27. 



108 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

way from beyond the lunar sphere to the 
eastern horizon of the dwellers upon the Nile. 
8. Finally, Tuat being originally the space 
between the invisible lunar and solar spheres, 
and the nightly journey of the sun-god being 
in the equatorial or approximately equatorial 
plane which divides all the heavens from all 
the hells, the student should expect to find 
precisely what we do find, namely, that on the 
journey the solar god personally communicates 
as freely with gods as with demons, and with 
demons as with gods. 1 

Lost Tuat, or at least the best known part 
thereof, is certainly found. With it we recover, 
in the semicircular mountain ranges, the in- 
dubitable trace of two lost spheres. Would we 
see them as figured at one period upon the 
monuments, we have only to turn to the oft- 
reproduced cut given on page 211 of Brugsch's 
Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter. 

1 The Egyptian pictures of the nocturnal voyage of their sun-god, Ra, 
recall to the memory of every reader of the classics the corresponding 
Greek myth of the "cup," or coracle, in which Helios was represented as 
each night making the same semicircular passage on the surface of the 
Ocean-stream. See Rapp, in Roscher's Lexzkon, i, 2, Sp. 2014. Very 
likely the sun-boat in this case was called a "cup" because those among 
whom the myth originated were familiar with the Kufa, or ordinary 
small river-boat of the Tigris and Euphrates, which was in the form cf 
a bowl. (See cut in Rawlinson's Herodotus, i, 260.) Referring to 
Bergk (Jahrb, fur Philologie, 1860, p. 389) and Kuhn (in his Zeitschrift, 
i, 536), Rapp correctly remarks: "Der Okeanos in welchem der Sonnen- 
becher dahinschwimmt, ist ursprunglich der Wolkenhimmel ; die Ein- 
schrankung seiner Fahrt auf die Nachtzeit nur die Folge des Anschlusses 
an die irdische Localisirung des Okeanos und der Einfugung dieses 
alten Mythus in die anderen, schon entwickelteren Vorstellungen." 



CHAPTER X 

POINTS AND PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 

In the foregoing chapters we have seen not 
a little evidence that in countries widely sep- 
arated the earliest traceable teachers held and 
taught what was essentially one and the same 
world-concept. This included appropriate local 
abodes for gods and demons, for living men 
and for dead. It grouped these several abodes 
into one all-inclusive geocentric, upright-axled, 
poly-uranian cosmos. In the land in which 
we can study the system to the best advantage, 
it presents two earths adjusted base to base: 
the upper the abode of living men; the under, 
its inverted counterpart, the abode of the dead. 
To the seven planetary divinities it gives seven 
distinct concentric spheres, to Ami and Ea an 
eighth, outermost in position, all-including, the 
sidereal sphere. When the upper half of the 
thus constituted universe is compared with the 
under, the symmetry of all the included parts 
and dimensions is seen to be as complete and 
admirable as it is striking. 

Now, minds capable of originating, or even 
of handing down from generation to generation, 
a mental world-picture of such remarkable 
unity, complexity, and balance as this cannot 

109 



110 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

have failed to go farther — cannot have failed to 
inquire how the constituent parts of this stu- 
pendous system were related to each other in 
effecting, or in regulating, the orderly ongoings 
of the whole. The diurnal movements of the 
sun, moon, and stars would of necessity call 
out at least crude attempts at explanation. So 
also the rising mists and falling rain. So also 
the alternate growth and decay of the earth's 
verdure, the birth and death of human beings. 
If night and day are seen to be ever chasing 
each other, the parts of the universe alternately 
darkened and illuminated must be so adjusted 
in the observer's thought as at least to render 
possible such incessant alternations. If mists 
rise and rains fall, cloudland and the land rained 
upon must be set in some relation by every 
perceiver of the facts. No proof is needed for 
the statement that if any man's universe in- 
cludes distinct abodes for the living and the 
dead, it will also include some idea of the way 
in which the no longer living make their passage 
from the one abode to the other. 

To a thoughtful person few things can be 
more impressive than the ways in which pre- 
historic men attempted to represent, and to 
render rationally coherent, the ongoings of the 
universe. These attempts reach us chiefly, of 
course, in the form of myths. In any form 
they are exceedingly precious; for they give us 
our only knowledge of the earliest efforts of our 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 111 

race to construct what we moderns call a 
philosophy of nature. 1 To call them mythical 
in no wise invalidates their claim to attentive 
study. The Nebular Hypothesis of Kant will 
become essentially a myth if, as an interesting 
and almost poetic speculation, it shall come to 
be handed down long generations after a more 
adequate view of the origin of the solar system 
has been discovered. Every such hypothesis 
for the explanation of a natural phenomenon is 
primarily an exercise of the imagination at the 
instigation of reason, and in the mythopceic 
stage of culture is sure to take on a mythologic 
form in its expression. 2 



1 "The assumptions of the Savant are hypotheses, those of the savage 
are called myths." — Frank B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of 
Religion, p. 32. Wilhelm Bender, Die Entstehung der W eltanschauungen 
im griechischen Altertum, Stuttgart, 1899, p. 56. 

2 Even as sober and severely scientific a writer as Professor E. B. 
Tylor emphasizes this relation between mythic form and scientific con- 
tent in nature-tales told among peoples of meager culture. In one place 
he says: "The savage names and stories of the stars and constellations 
may seem at first but childish and purposeless fancies; but it always 
happens, in the study of the lower races, that the more means we have 
of understanding their thoughts, the more sense and reason do we find 
in them. The aborigines of Australia say that Yurree and Wanjel, who 
are the stars we call Castor and Pollux, pursue Purra the Kangaroo 
(our Capella), and kill him at the beginning of the great heat, and the 
mirage is the smoke of the fire they roast him by. They say also that 
Marpean-Kurrk and Neilloan (Arcturus and Lyra) were the discoverers 
of the ant-pupas and the eggs of the loan-bird, and taught the aborigines 
to find them for food. Translated into the language of fact, these 
simple myths record the summer place of the stars in question, and the 
seasons of ant-pupas and loan-eggs, which seasons are marked by the 
stars who are called their discoverers." — Primitive Culture, i, 357. As 
the aborigines of Australia are commonly referred to as the very lowest 
specimens of our race, this evidence of their habitual recognition of 
individual stars by name, and this illustration of their ability to deter- 
mine the seasons by astronomic changes occurring in the progress of the 



112 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

We call these prehistoric myths fanciful and 
hard to understand. So they are. But in 
the infancy of language every originator of a 
new thought had also to invent terms for its 
expression. How can we wonder if in multi- 
tudes of cases the terms seized upon were 
symbolic, pictographic, or even poetically sug- 
gestive merely? The time for matching mental 
concepts with polytechnically accurate and ade- 
quate expressions had not yet come. Can we 
say that it has yet come? 

Again, we are told that these prehistoric 
myths are inconsistent with each other. They 
are. But our latest scientists rarely present us 
pictures of complex wholes without seeming 
equally inconsistent. Here are three elaborately 
colored drawings, representing obviously a hu- 
man body. They are from a new up-to-date 
atlas for students of human anatomy. One and 
the same face appears in each of the three 
pictures, but in all other parts they are utterly 
unlike. A child, or a Zulu, might imagine them 
to represent what men of three different races, 
or world-periods, believed to be the contents 
of the human frame. So thinking, he might 
well wonder at the utter lack of agreement. 
Very likely he would infer from the contrariety 
of the representations that all were alike worth- 



year, are certainly very interesting. Too few ethnologists write as if 
they had discovered what Tylor says "always happens in the study of 
the lower races." 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 113 

less. The deficiency would lie in the interpreter. 
In reality, there is no contrariety whatever in 
the three chromographs. The first represents 
the muscular, the second the vascular, and the 
third the nervous system of the human body. 
Precisely so, three myth-pictures of one and 
the same part or process of the universe may 
seem to us confused and inconsistent, when in 
reality all the confusion or inconsistency arises 
from our own failure to keep distinct such 
easily distinguishable world-concepts as the 
mechanical, the biological, and the personal. 
For example: In the mechanical, the axis of 
the universe may be pictured, as Plato pictures 
it, as "the Spindle of Necessity," the lifeless 
support of the whirling " whorls" of the heavens. 
In the biologic world-picture, however, the 
same world-axis is no longer lifeless, it is an 
ever-living oak-trunk, equipped with wings for 
self-rotation, the vital support of world-filling 
branches, the whole covered and adorned with 
"the starry peplos of Harmonia." Finally, in 
the picture in which the universe is considered 
mainly significant because a universe of persons, 
the oaken tree-trunk of the biologic world- view 
becomes the "columnar bridge" on which, as 
described in the vision of Er, the souls of the 
redeemed escape from our realms of sin and 
death, and gain the imperishable abode of the 
God of gods. All these conceptions of the axial 
line of the heavens and earth lay in Plato's 



114 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

mind with as little of contrariety or mutual 
inconsistency as lie the three anatomical chromo- 
graphs in the mind of the teacher who drew 
them. 

A lifetime could be spent in the one task 
of investigating the symbolic and poetic forms 
in which early peoples, and peoples of a later 
date, have expressed and reexpressed this 
fundamental idea of the world-axis. Though 
not a mythologist by calling, I many years ago 
printed a study in which the World-tree symbol 
of the universe was traced through twelve 
mythologies. The idea was found to be pre- 
Babylonian. The study further showed that 
sometimes, in place of the "Spindle of Neces- 
sity," we have a "lance," or an "arrow," or a 
"spear," on which the heavens revolve. In the 
Vedas, it is an "imperishable axle," on which 
without intermission celestial and terrestrial 
wheels are forever turning. Again, as in several 
mythologies, the columnar "bridge" is pictured 
as a "ladder," with seven, or eight, significant 
step-supports. In Burmese thought and imagery 
it is the "Umbrella Staff of Universe Sov- 
ereignty." The variety of the symbols is 
apparently without limit. In a work of amazing 
erudition, filling more than a thousand closely 
printed octavo pages, the late John O'Neill has 
claimed, and in the opinion of not a few has 
shown, that every known mythology is full of 
symbols and stories of this all-sustaining, all- 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 115 

unifying universe-axis, and of the rotary world- 
movements centering about it. 1 

Another lifetime could be spent in investi- 
gating in ancient mythologies what we may call 
the vascular, or circulatory, system of the uni- 
verse. That all waters, celestial, terrestrial, and 
subterrestrial, belong to one system of flowing 
and reflowing streams is taught in every ancient 
mythology. That all these streams proceed 
from, and return to, one and the same celestial 
head-spring is asserted or implied in so many 
that the investigator may safely consider this 
idea to have constituted a feature of whatever 
world-view antedated the ancient cosmologies 
that have reached us. In a study on this 
subject, printed in the year 1885, evidences 
pointing to this peculiar feature were brought 
together from Vedic and Avestan sources — 
evidences so clear as to satisfy Professor Spiegel 
that both the Indian and Iranian Aryans 
prehistorically held and taught it. In the same 
paper clues were given going to show that the 
same idea was shared by the Northmen, by 
mediaeval Christian teachers, by the Finns, the 
Sabeans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Baby- 
lonians, and even by the pre-Babylonian 



1 The work is entitled The Night of the Gods : An Inquiry into Cosmic 
and Cosmogonic Mythology and Symbolism (London, vol. i, 1893 ; vol. ii, 
1897). In the last two or three years of his life I received from this too 
early lost friend many letters, in one of which he was kind enough to say 
that but for my published researches the work above named would never 
have been written. 



116 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Akkado-Sumerians. In the Rig- Veda and in 
Homer, in the Puranas of India and the Suttas 
of China, the head-spring itself is a Fons Quadri- 
frons, that is to say, a Four-faced World-Fount, 
whose waters simultaneously pour forth east- 
wardly, westwardly, northwardly, southwardly, 
for the watering of the whole earth. 1 

But in any universe as complete and balanced 
as seems to have existed in the minds of pre- 
historic men, there must have been not only 
room and adjustments for the distribution of 
light and the circulation of the waters, but also 
recognized ways in which on proper occasions 
the tenanting intelligences could have inter- 
course with each other. Gods in widely sep- 
arated domiciles and jurisdictions must have 
had appropriate highways for their chariots 
when paying visits of ceremony one to another, 
or when summoned to attend one of those 
stated pan-uranian parliaments or consultation 
assemblies for which every polytheism provides. 
Moreover, gods and men being children of a 
common Sire, and the latter children dependent 
upon the former, no gulf between them must 
be impassable. We read of a fabled eagle 
bearing an Etana, or a Ganymede, from earth 



1 "Von der Richtigkeit Ihrer Ansicht iiber das altindische und alte- 
ranische Wassersystem bin ich vollkommen uberzeugt." — F. Spiegel, in 
a letter to the author. In one of the apocryphal gospels the quad- 
rifrontal World-Fount is located in the fourth heaven, and its four 
streams are milk and honey, oil and wine. The same idea is expressed 
in the Slavonic Book of Enoch. 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUD? 117 

to heaven; but from instances so avowedly 
exceptional as these we get no light upon pro- 
visions conceived of as originally and per- 
manently included in the cosmic structure itself 
and thought of as expressly designed to facilitate 
intercourse between terranean and subterranean 
beings, or between the celestial and counter- 
celestial. What in the oldest cosmological 
thought were the permanent structural pro- 
visions of this kind, if such existed? The an- 
swering of this question must be left to the 
scholars of the future. 1 

My own studies on this point have not been 
extensive, but so far as they have gone they 
have resulted in a strong conviction that the 
main highway from heaven to heaven and from 
underworld to underworld was along the central 
axis-line of the total universe. Precisely there 
we should expect to find it. There alone could 
it stretch through the mundane immensities 
forever unaffected by the whirling spheres. 
There alone could it enter and pass through 
the throne-city of every world and directly link 
all to each and each to all. So conceived, its 



1 A decidedly hopeful prospect of new progress in these studies is 
opened up by the establishment at Berlin of the new "Gesellschaft fur 
vergleichende Mythologie," and the starting of its "Mythologische 
Bibliotek" (Leip., 1907). Also by the recent issue of works more or less 
cosmological from the pens of Georg Siecke, H. Lessmann, G. Hiising, 
Bruno Baentsch, C. Fries, A. Dohring, Ditlef Nielsen, F. X. Kugler, F. 
K. Ginzel, and Johann Lepsius — all of whom give evidence of a whole- 
some dissatisfaction with the principles of interpretation long dominant 
in this field. 



118 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

upper section, the "Path of the Devas," is 
identical with the pre-Babylonian "Way of 
Anu." To reach it from the abodes of living 
men, beings possessing weight must needs have 
a support for their ascending feet. Hence 
columnar bridges like the Chinvat of the Per- 
sians; heaven-ladders like the Egyptian; ter- 
raced mountains like those of the Euphratean 
peoples. On the other hand, beings at the top 
of the heavenly Way, having no weight, were 
not thought to need any such solid supports 
in making a descent. Hence, in Platonic. 
Neo-Platonic, Gnostic, and Sabean thought, 
souls, descending from the highest sphere for 
incarnation through human birth, have need of 
nothing more than obstructionless polar open- 
ings in the crystalline planetary spheres to 
enable them to pass the seven, and to reach 
the earth. 

But while this axial highway from world to 
world was incomparably the most important in 
the universe, movements and paths on the 
surface of each of the spheres were, of course, 
conceivable. In mythologies built upon or 
including the idea of transmigration, one of 
these conceivable paths is particularly interest- 
ing since it provides a way by which a return 
from the land of the dead to the land of the 
living is possible, and this without retracing the 
path by which the ghost descended to the land 
of the dead. In Indian mythology, for example, 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 119 

the descent, twelve days in duration/ is sup- 
posed to be along the surface of the earth, 
southward, and across the ocean, into the 
transoceanic underworld. It is conceivable 
that a return is supposed possible by a path up 
the interior surface of the earth-inclosing lunar 
sphere. If this thought underlay the confused 
and confusing Upanishad passages referred to 
below, there may easily have been connected 
with it the further idea that the perpetually 
reascending souls which again and ever again 
are "rained down" from the zenith of the 
earth-inclosing lunar sphere are thus doomed to 
successive rebirths because as yet imperfectly 
purified, and that only by passing the Hadean 
gate that gives access to the exterior surface of 
the first of the heavenly spheres, this lunar 
one, and by ascending a path upon its exterior, 
one can successfully reach the "door" that 
leads to the higher heavens. 2 

One other structural feature in this most 
ancient world-concept will surely challenge and 
receive the attention of future students of the 
prehistoric past. I allude to the Zodiac, the 
most precious if not the oldest scientific heir- 
loom of the human race. 3 The axial world- 



1 Leon Feer, Revue de VHistoire des Religions, xviii, 302. 

2 Kaushttaki-Upanishad, i, 2-6 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. i, pp. 
273-279). See also the reference to the "Path of the Devas" and the 
"Path of the Pitris" in the Khandogya-Upanishad, iv, 15, 5 (in same 
volume, p. 80, and note on pp. 82, 83). 

3 Treating of the origin of the Zodiac in a recent article, Edward Walter 
Maunder, F.R.A.S., superintendent of the Solar Department, Royal 



120 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

pillar idea, associated in our minds with the 
name of Atlas, is no doubt of equal antiquity, 
possibly of greater; but it cannot compare in 
significance with the twelve-signed Zodiac. As 
soon as a man can mentally picture a circle he 
has the idea of a center; and as soon as the 
revolving sky suggests to his mind a sphere he 
has the idea of an axis. But to create the 
Zodiac required a far higher power of thought, 
and a vastly greater attainment in the knowledge 
of the stars and in mathematics. It is a perfect 
instrument for the measurement of astronomic 
ages. No modern has ever suggested a sub- 
stitute for it, or made any improvement in it. 
But had it as yet never been thought of, few 
persons now living in any one of our most 
civilized nations would be likely to invent it. 
How many would feel any need for such an 
asonian timepiece? How many, feeling the 
need, would be likely to hit upon this simple 
yet unimprovably perfect answer to the need? 
What learned and ingenious reader of this 
sentence believes that, if uninformed as to any 
previous effort in this line on the part of earlier 



Observatory at Greenwich, expresses admiration of the "giant among 
men" who first recognized that the visible sun is daily moving among 
the invisible stars. He says: "This, perhaps, was the most difficult dis- 
covery which up to the present date has been made in astronomy. . . . 
It was the first great incursion of physical research into the invisible, the 
first great triumph of induction, the first time that appearances were 
put aside in favor of thought." — Littell's Living Age, vol. 227, p. 618. 
Writing of this triumph of mind, Newcomb says: "It may be considered 
the birth of astronomic science." — Popular Astronomy, p. 16. 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 121 

men, he himself would have been the first to 
chart out the ecliptical zone of the heavens, 
defining within it the lunar mansions and the 
solar stations, backgrounding all with a sex- 
agesimally divided and subdivided scale of 
twelve equal parts, on which the minutes of the 
progress of every planet, and the ages of the 
precession of the equinoxes, could be mea- 
sured each with equal ease and both with 
absolute accuracy? Of the prehistoric man or 
men who really invented this ingenious chronom- 
eter nothing is known. No branch of the 
human family has a tradition determining even 
the millennium of its first introduction. As yet 
the savants who have busied themselves with 
the problem have given us no trustworthy 
result. As early as 1754, Neubronner, in Ger- 
many, raised the question. 1 Forty years later 
a distinguished French astronomer, Dupuis, 
working upon Egyptian data, convinced himself 
that the Zodiac was invented 15,000 years 
before his time. In 1872, however, an American 
astronomer, Professor John Brocklesby, assured 
us with great positiveness that "the Zodiac 
was constructed about 2,000 years ago." His 
exact date was 2,149 years before the time of 
his writing, which would give us the year 
277 B.C. His argument was simply that, at the 
start, "the signs doubtless corresponded in 
position with their constellations," and that the 

1 In his dissertation De Inventoribus Zodiaci. 



122 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

only time within the range of history when this 
occurred was between B.C. 200 and B.C. 300. 1 
Three years, however, after this settlement of 
the case, a learned professor at Leyden, Hol- 
land, employing Chinese data, announced that 
the Zodiac had been in use in China as early 
as B.C. 18716. 2 Only one year after this an 
American scholar gave as his solution, "12,500 
years ago." 3 Within the next twelve months 
the English astronomer, Richard A Proctor, 
published a paper favoring B.C. 2170 as the 
desired date. Amid such disagreements, the 
prospect is not encouraging. 4 One thing only 
seems growing more and more certain, and that 
is that if Brocklesby's fundamental proposition 
is correct, and if accordingly, at the start, "the 
signs corresponded in position with their re- 
spective constellations, we must go back of 
his date about 26,000 years; for, according to 
what is now known of Babylonian astronomy, 
the Zodiac was certainly in use many centuries 
before the correspondence of signs and con- 
stellations in the third pre-Christian century. 5 

1 Elements of Astronomy, New York, 1872. 

a G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise, La Haye, 1875. 

» O. D. Miller, Har-Moad, latest ed., North Adams, Mass., 1892. 

*The most recent estimates I have noticed are those of E. W. Maunder 
(op. cit., p. 619), and E. M. Plunket, Ancient Calendars and Constella- 
tions (London, 1903). According to the former, the Zodiac dates from 
circa 3000 B.C. ; according to the latter, from circa 6000 B.C. J. F. 
Hewitt, however, in his History and Chronology of the Myth-making Age, 
London, 1902, gives as the true date, B.C. 14200. 

* Referring to the astronomical researches of Epping and Strassmaier, 
Sayce, Oppert, Mayer, Mahler, Jensen, Lehmann, and others, a writer 
just referred to (Plunket) remarks: "Whatever else remains uncertain 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 123 

Such oscillations in estimates of the date of the 
invention remind one of the aeonian oscillations 
reported by astronomers in the angle of the 
inclination of the Zodiac to the celestial equator. 
The former, however, lack the determinability, 
the moderate limits, and the indescribable 
stateliness of the astronomic movement. 1 

A final inquiry. Few readers can have 
reached the present page without having re- 
peatedly and earnestly asked themselves, Where 
was originated this unique, this widespread, 
almost ecumenical, pre-Babylonian conception 
of the universe? In what land can our "hairy 
arboreal ancestors" — as the current anthropol- 
ogy calls them — have so far lifted their thoughts 
from the gathering of nuts and edible roots for 
daily food as to feel an intellectual interest in 
the far-off astral world, and because of this 



and open to discussion, some facts are clearly established. We now 
know that the inhabitants of Babylonia, in a remote age (certainly as 
early as the fourth millennium B.C.), were acquainted with the twelve 
divisions of the Zodiac, and that these divisions were imagined under 
figures closely resembling in almost every instance those now depicted 
on our celestial globes." Similarly M. A. Quentin, in the Revue de 
VHistoire des Religions (Mars-avril, 1895, pp. 169ff .), places the invention 
"more than 4000 B.C." The contributions of Professors Hommel and 
Winckler in the Babylonian field are very important. In the Greek 
field no work is perhaps more authoritative at this date than Professor 
Franz Boll's Sphaera. A worthy geographical counterpart is E. Hugo 
Berger's Geschichte der vrissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Gricchen, 2 Aufl., 
Leipzig, 1903. 

According to Lagrange this angle was at its maximum (29° 30') B.C. 
29400. It then decreased to a minimum (21° 20') B.C. 14400; then 
increased to a new maximum (23° 53') in B.C. 2000. Its next minimum 
(22° 54') will be A.D. 6600; its next maximum (25° 21') in A.D. 19300. 
Many and great are the advantages of the astronomer over the ar- 
chaeologist ; he can not only unveil the past, but also foretell the future 



124 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

interest proceeded to distinguish the planets 
from the stars that never wander, and — most 
remarkable of all — to invent that Zodiacal 
chronometer whose months are double millen- 
niums and whose year is more than 25,000 of 
our years? One of the most eminent of living 
astronomers, Maunder, of the Royal Observatory 
at Greenwich, following the same line of evi- 
dence as Proctor, and before him Schwartz, 
reaches the conclusion they reached, to wit, that 
the terrestrial standpoint of the astronomers 
who framed our constellations and mapped the 
Zodiac cannot have been in Babylonia, or in 
Egypt, or in Arabia, or in India. He further 
says that "probably" we are warranted in 
excluding from our search Greece, Italy, and 
Spain. 1 If not in any of these seats of ancient 
culture, where can that primeval standpoint 
have been? I believe the true answer to this 
question is now attainable. 

The region I am about to suggest is equidis- 
tant from India, Babylonia, and Egypt. From 
each of these, however, it widely differs. It is 



* E. Walter Maunder, in Littdl's Living Age, vol. 227, pp. 614ff. The 
present writer was in the midst of an interesting correspondence with 
Mr. Proctor at the time of his sudden and widely lamented death. That 
the constellations associated by him with the Flood-tradition were 
outlined and named at the time and place supposed by him, and by 
Maunder, is far from incredible; but both the interest in astral worlds, 
and the proficiency in stellar studies manifested in the conception and 
construction of such a "Star-story of the Deluge," require for their 
rational explanation a liberal allowance of antecedent time and a place 
more signally adapted than Cappadocia, or any other part of Asia Minor, 
to "draw men's thoughts to heaven." 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 125 

more favorable for astronomic observation and 
for astronomic experiment than any one of the 
three. Indeed, no other land was so fitted to 
become the birthplace of the science. It is a 
region in which the movements of the heavenly 
bodies can be watched through unusually pro- 
tracted periods, without interruption, and under 
cosmical conditions more favorable than any 
that our modern astronomers have known. 
Especially does its center offer an astronomic 
viewpoint superior in several respects to any 
to be found on the banks of the Euphrates or 
in the basin of the Mediterranean. Men there 
domiciled would need no careful measurements 
or logarithmic calculations to determine solstice 
or equinox — each would be as visibly fixed and 
dated as are with us the noon and the sunset. 
At that center there is but one sunrise and one 
sunset in the whole long year. Strange as this 
arrangement would seem to us were we trans- 
located to that latitude, our wonder would be 
increased on finding that by a short march 
of less than five miles we could reach a new 
camping ground distinguished from the first by 
having annually two sunrises and two sunsets. 
Nor would our wonder fail to grow on finding 
that with every farther march the same distance 
southward we would find camping grounds 
having an additional annual sunrise and sunset 
until, after more than three and a half hundred 
such marches, we reached a charmed circle be- 



126 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

yond which, however far we journeyed, we could 
find but three hundred and sixty-five such annual 
apparitions and vanishings of the orb of day. 

Now, it is on, and within, the charmed circle 
inclosing these ever increasing and decreasing 
dawns and nightfalls that the starry realms can 
be studied as nowhere else. On it, an observer 
whose zenith is 47° from the pole of the ecliptic 
soon finds his observatory obligingly wheeled 
into a position where zenith and pole are 
absolutely coincident. This pleasing transpor- 
tation poleward or the reverse completes itself 
every twelve hours, and by no mechanism of 
the observatory, or effort of the observer. The 
parallaxes and sky-tiltings obtainable in these 
ever-recurring circuits can nowhere else be had. 
Then, farther within the circle, a heavenly body 
can be watched and studied months at a time. 
Star-paths which we at present can trace but a 
night, and through but a minute fraction of an 
unknown arc, can there be followed through 
their completed circuits, and this without one 
hour of interruption. There the problem of the 
identity or non-identity of the morning and 
evening star has never risen. There no com- 
mentator on ancient poets has ever had excuse 
for getting confused over the eastern and 
western palaces of the sun. There all stars 
along the celestial equator can be correlated to 
corresponding points on the terrestrial horizon 
of the observer, or at his pleasure tilted to a 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 127 

different plane. There the sphericity of the 
earth, and the inclination of its axis, would be 
easily discoverable. 1 So also the dependence of 
the moon upon the sun for her illumination. So 
also the rationale of an eclipse. There more 
naturally than anywhere else could men come 
to think of the azure sky as an ever-moving, 
earth-encircling Ocean-stream, on whose level 
waters the sun and moon and stars were sailing. 2 
There, and nowhere else, the observer is at the 
top of an earth that never rolls over, and under 
a zenith that never passes to its setting. 3 That 
country's center is the Arctic Pole, its bound- 
aries the Arctic Circle. Years ago I called it 
the one natural astronomic observatory of the 
whole earth, and the more I have studied the 
astronomic attainments and world-views of pre- 
historic men, the more certain it has seemed to 
me that here, in this upright-axled country, was 
originated this upright-axled cosmology of the 
oldest culture-peoples. 
The progress of a like conviction in the wide 

1 The changing aspects of the heavens during a simple walk in a straight 
line from any point a few miles distant from the pole to a point equidis- 
tant beyond the pole would suggest the true figure of the earth, and 
would well-nigh furnish an ocxilar demonstration of the ancient doctrine 
that the celestial sphere was centered about a fixed terrestrial one. 
Even the slow movement of the celestial pole around the unchanging 
pole of the ecliptic, and the consequent precession of the equinoxes 
(both known to the Babylonians), could have been first discovered in 
the Arctic regions far more easily, one would think , than in Babylonia. 

2 See Berger, Mythische Ko.wnographie der Griechen, 1904, p. 2. 

3 For this reason it is the only place where the heaven-ladders and 
columnar bridges of all mythologies can permanently and uninterruptedly 
connect our earth with the heavens above it. See The Cradle of the 
Human Race, pp. 144, 145, and passim. 



128 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

world of scholarship may be slow, but it is 
remarkably steady. 1 Already in the eighteenth 
century Jean Sylvain Bailly, an astronomer of 
first rank, reached the well-reasoned conclusion 
that the genesis of his science was in the highest 
North. Buffon, a genius of the same genera- 
tion, demonstrated that in the slow cooling of 
the earth in early ages the first portions of its 
surface to become habitable by men must have 
been at the poles. Two or three generations 
later biology independently reached the con- 
viction that the dominant floral and faunal 
forms of the whole earth had their origin in 
the Paleo-Arctic zone. 2 About the same time 
ethnologists began to suggest or to assert th€ 
Arctic origin of the human family. 3 Even 
authors from whom such a doctrine was by no 
means looked for found reason for professing 
their belief that the human species originated 
in the polar world. 4 Comparative philology has 

1 See my paper on "The Cradle of the Human Race — Recent Litera- 
ture," in the Methodist Review, New York, December, 1908. 

2 Kriz, Mittheilungen der Wiener anthropologischen Gesellschaft, N. F. 
xvii, 1, 1898. Eminent pioneers in this scientific advance were Asa 
Gray, Oswald Heer, A. Penck, Otto Kuntze, and Joseph Le Conte. See 
James Orton, Comparative Zoology, p. 384. Also, G. Hilton Scribner, 
Where Did Life Begin? New York, 2d ed., 1903. 

3 Quatref ages, The Human Species, New York, 1879, p. 178. Moritz 
Wagner, Ursprung und Heimat des Urmenschen, Basel, 1889. M. Le 
Marquis G. de Saporta, "How the Earth was Peopled," in The Popular 
Science Monthly, New York, 1884, translated from the Revue des Deux 
Mondes. 

4 Giulio Lazzarini, Etnica Razionale, Pavia, 1890. In June, 1884, and 
again in December, 1891, in the pages of LaNuova Scienza, Rome, the 
editor, Dr. Enrico Caporali, supported this view of the cradleland of 
the race. 



PROBLEMS FOR FUTURE STUDY 129 

increasingly turned its eyes in the same direc- 
tion for light upon its problems. 1 Comparative 
mythology, through Indian investigators in the 
East, 2 and Keltic in the West, 3 and Teutonic in 
the center, 4 is more and more pointing with 
converging fingers toward a Proto- Aryan home- 
land within the Arctic Circle. 5 Anthropology, in 
the person of some of its most authoritative 
representatives, is to-day teaching, with a 
positiveness of conviction hitherto unequaled, 
that the real cradleland of the whole human 
family, and the center of its original dispersion, 
"must be sought in 'Arktogaa/ a north-polar 
country which no foot of man shall ever again 
tread, a land covered with everlasting ice, or 
submerged beneath the billows of the ocean." 8 
Even the biblical theologians have come to see 
that the Eden story of Genesis, when rightly 

1 E. R. Burton, Etyma Latina, London, 1890. 

2 Bal Gungadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, Bombay, 1903, 
8vo, pp. xxiv, 504. This author is a native Sanskrit scholar who long 
resisted the view to which, as here shown, his maturer studies have 
led him. 

» Principal John Rhys, Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxford, 
Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (Hibbert 
Lectures), London, 1888. "In any case, the mythological indications 
to which your attention has been called, point, if I am not mistaken, to 
some spot within the Arctic Circle" (p. 636). 

* Ernst Krause, Tuiskoland : Derarischen Stamme und Goiter Urheimat, 
Glogau, 1891, 8vo, pp. over 600. Noticed by Rudolph Virchow in 
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Heft 3, 1891. Two years later Dr. Krause 
published a supplementary volume: Die Trojaburgen Nordeuropas, 
Glogau, 8vo, pp. xxxii, 300. His Allgemeine Weltanschauung in ihrer 
historischen Entwicklung (Stuttgart, 1889) I have not seen. 

* J. D. Ludwig Wilser, Herkunft und Urgeschichte der Arier, 1899. 
"Wilser, Menschwerdung, Stuttgart, 1907, pp. 11, 13, 15, 72, 107ff. 

Also the authors quoted by him in his Tierwelt und Erdalter (1908), and 
in his treatise, Die Urheimat des Menschengeschlechtcs, Heidelberg, 1905. 



130 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

interpreted, is the story of a Polar Paradise, 
the headspring of whose four rivers is in the 
upper heavens. 1 At no distant day, compara- 
tive cosmology, youngest of all these lines of 
scientific research, is certain to bring in her 
slowly and carefully gathered testimony; and we 
may rest assured that this testimony will be 
found to be in full accord with that of her 
tributary sciences. 

1 Hermann Gunkel, Genesis Ubersetst und erkldrt, Gottingen, 1901, p. 33. 
T. K. Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, London, 1907, 
pp. 84, 455. Gunkel expressly equates "der Gottesgarten," "der Gottes- 
berg," "Eden," and "der Nordpol des Himmels." See also Alfred 
Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients, 2 Aufl., S. 
188-202, for approximations to this view. 

Since the foregoing was put in type Wilser, in an article entitled 
"Der Nordische Scbopfungsherd," printed in the Zeitschrift fur den 
Ausbau der Entwieklungslehre, Heft V, 1909, has given an instructive 
summary of the entire literature of this anthropological doctrine, in- 
cluding even my article in the Methodist Review for November, 1908. 



APPENDIX 

PAGE 

I. The Mandala Oblation 133 

Paper read before a private club of clergymen, March 4, 
1897. 

II. Homer's Abode op the Dead 157 

Printed in The Boston University Year Book. vol. x 
(1883). 

III. Homer's Abode op the Living 178 

Printed in The Boston University Year Book, vol. xii. 

IV. The Gates op Sunrise in the Oldest Mythologies. . 192 

Printed in The Babylonian and Oriental Record, 
London, vol. xii (1889). 

V. The Homeland op the Gandharvas 197 

Prepared for Annual Meeting, American Oriental So- 
ciety, 1906. 

VI. The World Tree op the Teutons 200 

Printed in The Monist, Chicago, January, 1907. 
VII. Problems Still Unsolved in Indo- Aryan Cosmology. 205 
Printed in The Journal of the American Oriental So- 
ciety, 1905. 

VIII. Index op Authors 217 

IX. Index op Subjects 221 



131 



SECTION I— THE MANDALA OBLATION 

Every day in the year, in every Lamaist temple in 
Tibet, there is offered up by the officiating priest a 
notable oblation. Few, even among students of religion, 
have ever heard of it. I know of but two writers who 
give evidence of acquaintance with the details of the 
rite, and neither of these shows any adequate appre- 
ciation of its significance. To my mind the offering 
is the most interesting, and in some respects the most 
impressive, anywhere found in the whole history of 
human worship. It consists of thirty-eight little thumb- 
and-finger pinches of rice-grains on a tray. Why this 
simple offering should have such exceptional impressive- 
ness and significance can never be understood without 
some understanding of Lamaism; and Lamaism can 
never be understood without a careful study of the 
earlier Indian Buddhism, of which it is a corrupt but 
more highly organized form. To this earlier system, 
then — to its view of the world and of human life — I 
must first invite your attent on. 

In the poem entitled The Daisy, Tennyson recounts 
some travels of his in Italy, and in so doing chances to 
recall his impressions of the Milan Cathedral. Imme- 
diately his own verse takes on a new elevation and he 
cries out: 

"O Milan, O the chanting quires, 
The giant windows ' blazon 'd fires, 
The height, the space, the gloom, the glory!" 

That last line is apt to haunt me whenever I turn 
my thoughts in the direction they are now about to 

133 



134 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

take. With a good degree of continuity I have studied 
Brahmanic and Buddhistic teachings for more than 
twenty-five years, yet even now it often seems as if I 
were only mastering the alphabet of a strange new 
language. I even thought of writing for this very 
occasion a paper with this title: "Why I am resolved 
to abandon my studies of Buddhism." More than once 
I have suspended them, but the issue of the next new 
text-translation, or treatise thereon, has usually re- 
awakened my zeal. Still, as often as I return to the 
contemplation of the Buddhist conception of the world 
and of life I feel afresh, 

"O the height, the space, the gloom, the glory!" 

To get some impression of the altitude and spacious- 
ness of this world-view I know of no better way than 
to start with the familiar world-view of the ancient 
Greeks, and thence to proceed to that described in the 
sacred books of the Buddhists. 

Omitting, then, all debated questions, we may remind 
ourselves that the world of Homer and Hesiod con- 
sisted, first, of an earth for the abode of men living and 
dead; second, above this a starry heaven inhabited by 
the gods; and third, below the earth at an equal dis- 
tance with the sky a Tartaros full of murky darkness, 
the abode of Titans and other dethroned enemies of the 
gods. Beyond this overarching heaven and underarch- 
ing Tartaros naught existed or was imagined to exist. 
This one world-shell included the abodes of all beings 
and all beings themselves. No conception of the uni- 
verse could well be clearer or more complete. 

What, now, of its dimensions? How far was it sup- 
posed to be from highest heaven to lowest hell? 

We cannot tell in furlongs or in miles. Homer, 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 135 

however, tells us that Tartaros was as far below the 
earth as the heaven was above it, and Hesiod confirms 
this when he tells us that an anvil dropped from heaven 
would fall nine days before reaching the earth, and 
that if dropped from the earth it would likewise require 
nine days to reach the bottom of murky Tartaros. 
Such a measurement, however, would seem to be a 
little poetic and to have something of the exaggeration 
of poetry, for when the Father of Gods and men hurled 
Hephaistos over the battlements of heaven he alighted 
on Lemnos, according to his own testimony in the 
Iliad, at the close of one day's fall. Moreover, we 
must not forget that in the Odyssey we find the giants 
planning to scale the heights of heaven by simply piling 
Pelion upon Ossa and Ossa upon Olympos, so making 
the distance only the height of those three mountains. 
Indeed, Atlas was tall enough to stand upon the earth 
and support the heaven upon his upstretched hands. 
With these cosmological thought-measures of the Greeks 
in mind, let us now turn to the cosmos of the Buddhists, 
not forgetting that it was inherited in large part from 
the yet older Hindu teaching. The description I am 
about to give is based upon those of Spence-Hardy, 
Beal, and the more recent Oriental scholars. 

First, let us take the Homeric world-shell and see 
what enlargement it may need to enable it to accom- 
modate the Buddhist thought of the world's contents. 
In its center, laterally considered, we must locate the 
stupendous mountain Meru, or Su-meru, which means 
' 'Beautiful Meru." This is the upright axis of the 
earth conceived of as an enormous foursquare mountain. 
Around it revolve the sun and moon in horizontal 
orbits. It is glorious beyond description, being like 
burnished gold on one side, silver on another, sapphire 



136 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

on another, ruby on another. From base to summit 
it is 1,680,000 miles. Its support underneath is the 
still larger Trikuta rock, whose three supporting peaks 
are each 40,000 miles in height. This tripod-like pedes- 
tal rests upon the Gal Polova, or World-stratum of 
Gold, which rocklike serves as a bottom to all the oceans. 
In vertical thickness this is 3,200,000 miles. Next 
underneath this is a Jala Polova, or World-stratum of 
Waters, 4,800,000 miles in thickness, and below this a 
World-stratum of Air, the Va Polova, and this is 9,600,- 
000 miles in thickness. Below this, our world, or, as 
the Buddhist would say, our sakwala, does not extend. 

One of the greatest of recent achievements of science 
is the liquefaction of atmospheric air. A few weeks after 
its first accomplishment the emperor and empress of 
Germany visited a laboratory of the university in Berlin 
to witness the performance of the wonder by a famous 
professor from Munich. At the close of the successful 
experiment the enthusiastic emperor, with his own hand, 
decorated the professor with an imperial order. Our 
next problem will be the solidifying of this liquefied 
air. Of this Science has not yet begun to dream. 
These Orientals, however, began to dream of it long ago. 
If the German Kaiser could visit this bottom stratum of 
the Buddhist world he would find that though it is a 
stratum of air, it is one perfectly solid and harder than 
a diamond. 

Returning now from the bottom of things and ascend- 
ing through the Air-stratum 9,600,000 miles, and through 
the Water-stratum 4,800,000 miles, and through the 
Gold-stratum 3,200,000 miles, and through the Earth- 
stratum 1,200,000 miles, we arrive at last at the level 
of Jambu-dvipa, and the three other island-continents 
which constitute the abode of men and of the beings 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 137 

with which men are most familiar. We have measured 
the depth of our world-shell — nearly 19,000,000 miles; it 
remains to explore its height. 

But before we scale the heavens we must ascend on 
terra firma a stupendous series of terraces, seven in 
number, quadrangular in form, 1 and inclosing in their 
center Mount Meru, the axial line of our heavens and 
earth. These seven terraces dam in and hold in place 
seven intervening seas, also concentric, of course, with 
the square continents which separate and shore them. 
Now, as Jambu-dvlpa, our own particular abode, lies 
in the Great Sea, the outermost of all, a step in thought 
from our own island-continent to the nearest of the 
seven concentric square continents would be a step across 
the inner portion of the outermost sea up to the higher 
level of the seventh of the continents. Another thence 
to the sixth continent would take one across the seventh 
sea and up to the level of the sixth continent, and so 
on, until on crossing the first or innermost sea one 
would plant his feet on the lofty level of the visible 
base of Mount Meru. I say "lofty level" because the 
height of the seventh continent above the outermost 
sea is more than 6,000 miles, that of the sixth above 
the seventh more than 12,000, that of the fifth above 
the sixth more than 24,000, and so on each time in 
redoubled numbers, until the last or inmost step alone 
lifts us more than 400,000 miles toward the heavenly 
regions, although properly speaking we are still on 
terra firma. We are now at the level of Ilavrita, the 
divinely beautiful country surrounding the visible base 
of Mount Meru. Far above us are the heavens to which 
we now turn our attention. 

The first, or lowest, is called the heaven of the Maha- 

1 See picture on p. 79 of Waddell's Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895). 



138 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Rajahs, that is, the heaven of the Four Great Kings. 
Ancient Hindu cosmography places at the four corners 
of this divinely beautiful country, Ilavrita, four stu- 
pendous mountains, each 100,000 miles in height. These 
constitute what are called the four buttresses of the far 
loftier Meru, which stands in their center, and towers 
to an almost immeasurable distance above them. Now, 
the heaven which at the height of 400,000 miles over- 
arches Ilavrita and all the concentric quadrangular 
oceans and continents below is the heaven of the Four 
Great Kings. Each of these kings is sovereign over the 
quarter of the world in which his mountain is located, 
and each has subjects much resembling demigods. One 
of these mighty monarchs is white, another imperial 
purple, another imperial yellow, another imperial red. 
A part of their duty is to drive back any demon armies 
that may strive to reach the heavens of the gods by 
scaling Mount Meru. The normal lifetime of beings born 
into this lowest heaven — and man or beast, or god, or 
ghost, is liable to be born into it — is 9,000,000 years. 

The second heaven is that of the Three and Thirty 
Gods, or, as it is often called from the name of its king, 
the heaven of Sakra. This overarches the heaven of 
the Four Great Kings. It must be at least 400,000 miles 
higher up, for it is on a level with the summit of Mount 
Meru. Right on that summit is the palace and the 
capital city of King Sakra. Of course, his dominions 
extend laterally far beyond this capital to almost unimag- 
inable distances. The most moderate statement is 
600,000 miles. The lifetime of anyone born into this 
heaven is 36,000,000 years. It almost gives one a brain 
paralysis to remember that in his various previous 
births before his last, Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, 
was born into this heaven no less than twenty times. 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 139 

Accordingly, he spent in this one abode no less than 
720,000,000 years. It is the heaven into which his 
mother was born on her decease seven days after she had 
given him birth. One can but feel an interest in learn- 
ing what kind of a place it is. Here is a brief account 
from one of the Shasters summarized by Beal in his 
Catena of Buddhist Scriptures : 

The central city is 100,000 miles in circuit. The 
towering gates are fifteen miles in height and there are 
one thousand of these gates. Each gate has five hundred 
blue-clad celestial watchmen fully armed. In its center 
is a kind of inner city called the Golden City of King 
Sakra. Here he has a pavilion 10,000 miles in circuit. 
Its floor is of pure gold inlaid with every kind of costly 
gem. This inner city has five hundred gates, and on 
each of its four sides are one hundred towers; in each 
tower one thousand and seven hundred chambers; in 
each chamber seven devis, and each devi is attended 
by seven handmaidens. All these devis are consorts of 
King Sakra, with whom he has intercourse in different 
forms and personations according to his pleasure. The 
total region of this heaven, like others, is surrounded 
by a sevenfold wall, a sevenfold ornamental railing, a 
sevenfold row of tinkling curtains, and beyond these 
are seven rows of Talas trees. All these encircle one 
another, and are of every color of the rainbow, being 
composed of every imaginable precious substance. So 
the description runs on and on. 

This King Sakra is himself one of the most interest- 
ing of all imaginable gods. He has for a trumpet a 
remarkable conch-shell one hundred and twenty cubits 
in length, and when he has finished blowing a merry 
blast upon it, it continues to sound on and on four 
months before its wind is exhausted. Moreover, his 



140 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

throne is a kind of moral thermopile, so that every 
now and then when some saint down in the human 
world is achieving some extraordinary merit — one so 
great that he is in danger of becoming more powerful 
than any god — this marble throne suddenly begins to 
grow hot, and Sakra is prompted to descend in haste 
to the world of men and look into the case. Usually 
he disguises himself as a man and tests the saint, and 
as the stories have been written by the saints, he is 
usually represented as overwhelmed with amazement at 
the wisdom and transcendent powers of the man he 
came to test. One could easily fill an hour with read- 
ings from his adventures of this kind as told in the 
Jatakamala and other sacred books. Of course we must 
not, for we have yet higher heavens to climb. Our 
earthly minutes and hours are not like those found in 
these heavenly places. 

The third heaven is inhabited by beings called Yamas, 
and their king is Suyama. This is at an immense dis- 
tance above the heaven of Sakra. As its inhabitants 
are far above all possible incursions from the demon 
armies they are called "Strife-less." They determine the 
time of day by the opening and shutting of the flowers. 
Their peaceful lifetime extends through the liberal 
allowance of 144,000,000 of our years. 

The fourth heaven, far above this, is that of the 
Tushitas, or the Satisfied Ones. Their king is San- 
tushita. This seems to be regarded as specially holy, 
as it is the last home of Budhisattvas, or future Buddhas 
— one by one — before their final birth as men. Maitreya, 
the fifth and last of our present world-cycle, is now in 
this heaven biding his time. We may have long to 
wait for him, for the life allowance here is 576,000,000 
years. 



THE MAXDALA OBLATION 141 

Of the fifth heaven the sacred books have little to 
say. Its inhabitants are called "The Gods who Delight 
in Fashioning." With them life runs on to 2,304,000,000 
years. 

To indicate the progressive disappearance of the 
sensual in the heavenly beings as one ascends, the 
people are taught that in the first heaven the occupants 
propagate the species in the same way as human beings, 
in the second it is done by a mere clasping in the arms, 
in the third by a mere touch of hands, in the fourth 
by colloquy, or an interchange of speech, and in the 
fifth by a mere exchange of glances. Beyond this 
abode propagation is supposed to cease. 1 

The sixth is the heaven of King Mara, and he rules 
over millions of subjects, also called Maras. This King 
Mara, like Sakra, has great interest in men. He tests 
them so often and so mercilessly that he is often called 
the Buddhist Satan. If time would permit I should 
like to read the description of his temptation of Gautama 
when he was sitting under the Bo-tree. The elephant 
which Mara rode on that occasion was one hundred and 
fifty leagues in height. In many passages he is called 
"the Wicked One/' but this cannot be taken in our 
strict monotheistic sense. He is a god ruling over 
gods, and their happy lives fill out 9,216,000,000 years. 
The garments of any one of these weigh only the one 
hundred and twenty-eighth part of a single ounce. It 
is the last heaven in which clothing of any kind is 
needed. 

How many more heavens above these six rise from 
height to height unpicturable? Twenty. 

It is manifestly impossible to proceed with such de- 

1 Pallas and Koppen, quoted in Menzel's Vorchristliche Unsterblichkeits- 
lehre, i, 277. 



142 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

tail as hitherto. We must group the whole twenty-six, 
as the Buddhist teachers themselves do. The first six 
are the heavens of sensuous gods — divinities — capable, 
like the Olympians, of marriage and propagation, yet 
so self-luminous with divine energies that none of these 
heavens have need of the light of a sun or of a moon, 
any more than did that celestial city described in the 
Apocalypse. On being born into any one of them a 
person takes the color of the celestial flower on which 
one's eyes may chance first to fall. 

The twenty yet higher heavens are collectively styled 
the Brahma-loka, or heavens of Brahma. If a stone as 
big as a pagoda were dropped from the lowest of these 
it would fall 18,383 years before it could reach the 
earth, so we are assured in one of the Shasters. Poor 
Hesiod's anvil and its nine days' fall are as naught. 

The seventh, eighth, and ninth heavens take us be- 
yond all trace of sense high into the spirit realm. No 
being can ever reach any one of them until sublimated 
by long practice of meditation and mystic vision up to 
the ecstatic experience known as the first Dhyana, or 
spiritual trance. Over the third of this group, namely, 
the ninth in the total order, presides as sovereign Great 
Brahma, the supreme god of ancient Brahmanism. 

The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth constitute another 
group of three attainable only by beings who have 
attained the powers and virtues of the second trance. 

In like manner the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
are a yet higher group attainable only by those who 
have attained the powers and virtues of adepts in the 
third trance. 

Next follows a group of seven, the sixteenth to the 
twenty-second inclusive; and these are attainable only 
by beings who have attained the transcendent powers 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 143 

and virtues of adepts in the fourth and highest trance- 
condition. It is well that these so-called heavens of 
form extend no higher, for as we ascend through them 
the inhabitants are found to increase in stature in a 
geometrical progression, so that here in the twenty- 
second they are in height 160,000 of our miles. 

Combining now all four of these groups of heavens 
reached by beings sublimated to the trance stages, we 
have what the Buddhist scriptures call the heavens of 
form, Rupa-loka. They are sixteen in number. Beyond 
and above this higher group, comes last of all, most 
ineffable of all, the four Arupa-loka, or heavens of form- 
less entities. These are the twenty-third, the twenty- 
fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth. The altitude 
of these no archangelic surveyor can ever measure, for 
they rise into a realm as impalpable as that of subject- 
less, objectless thought. The tenants of the twenty-sixth 
are called "beings who abide in neither consciousness 
nor unconsciousness." 

Here, then, culminates the spheroidal sakwala in 
which we dwell. No opium-dream described by De 
Quincey ever grew to such unimaginable proportions or 
so moved us to exclaim, 

"O the height, the space, the gloom, the glory I" 

As yet, however, I have hardly more than made a 
beginning in Buddhist cosmology. I have simply taken 
you from the bottom of our enlarged Homeric world- 
shell to its summit. Had I time to make a horizontal 
journey from one side of this fairy world to the other 
and around the four sides of beautiful Meru, we should 
find spaces and groupings and distances quite as be- 
wildering. We should find geometric continents, and 
satellite continents, and lakes and seas, all filled with 



144 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

fantastic yet remarkably coherent creations, and all 
described with the greatest apparent accuracy of detail. 
We should find the seventh concentric sea common salt 
sea-water, but the sixth is pure fresh water, the fifth 
comparable only to spirits of wine, the fourth to sugar- 
cane juice, the third to butter, the second to fragrant 
curds, the highest and innermost, the first, to a milklike 
liquid of absolute whiteness, yielding to the gods an 
elixir of life. And the depth of this innermost and 
highest of the seven concentric quadrilateral seas, like 
its breadth, is 840,000 miles. Here we might see waves 
400 miles in height, others 600, each variety with its 
own proper nautical name. Nor would these produce 
any sense of disproportion. In such vast expanses they 
would be the veriest ripplings of a summer sea. Take 
the outermost ocean, the one in which we live. The 
four island-continents therein are the outermost land, 
but beyond this last barrier of land the waste of waters 
extends out and out and out to the uttermost wall of 
the world, a distance of 2,798,000 miles. At that 
far-off outer shore we should find a circular wall of iron 
or of living metallic rock, like iron, 1,640,000 miles in 
height, one half above the water and one half below. 
The circumference of this circular wall, this solid equa- 
torial girdle of the world, is no less than 36,103,500 
miles. 

Crossing such a world we should very likely be for- 
tunate enough to see in one of these oceans a Timinda, 
a fish 2,000 miles in length, or perchance the Timingala, 
which is 3,000 miles long, or possibly even the Timira 
Pingala, which is 5,000 miles in length. With every 
motion of its right or left ear it agitates the waters 
5,000 miles in all directions. This creature requires 
water more than a thousand miles deep to cover his 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 145 

back. Do not regard this as an exaggerated or fanciful 
fish story, for these sacred writers tell us of four other 
finny monsters that sport in these mighty waters, and 
each of these is 10,000 miles in length. 

In a world of such dimensions why wonder at the 
size of the Jambu tree? From root to highest tuft is 
1,000 miles; the space covered by the outspreading 
branches is in circumference 3,000 miles; the trunk is 150 
miles around, and from the root to the first branches 
it is 500 miles. Each of the four main branches is 500 
miles in length, and wherever a fruit of the tree is 
dropped, plants of gold immediately spring up. 

The adjustment of all the parts of this almost illimit- 
able world is thoroughly thought out. The outer and 
inner dimensions of all the seven concentric square 
continents are exactly stated. So far as I have noticed, 
all of our European and American scholars have repre- 
sented these continents as on one level — that of the 
outermost ocean. This is not correct. Counting out- 
ward from Mount Meru each lies at a vastly lower level 
than the one preceding, and these differences of level, 
as already stated, are arranged according to a strict 
arithmetical progression. 

The four island-continents well deserve a passing 
glance. Situated in the outermost ocean, on opposite 
sides of Mount Meru, they all sustain a like relation to 
the circling sun and moon. Accordingly, when it is 
exactly noon in our far-southern continent, it is sunset 
in the eastern, sunrise in the western, and midnight in 
the northern. The four are differentiated by their 
shape as well as position. The one in the far East is 
shaped like a half-moon, the one in the far South like 
an equilateral triangle, the one in the far West a perfect 
circle, the one in the far North a perfect square. All 



146 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

are inhabited by men, but by men of very different 
tribal characteristics. For example, the forms of their 
faces in every case correspond to those of their con- 
tinents. As a consequence the men of the western 
continent have faces as round as a full moon; the faces 
of the men of the East, on the contrary, are simply 
semilunar — a state of things very embarrassing, one 
would think, to a person of that country desiring to 
be photographed in more than one position. As our 
continent is triangular, the ideal facial outline with us 
is triangular, that is, broad across the temples and 
descending gently to a point beneath the chin. I will 
only add that different complexions are found in all of 
the four continents except the Northern. There all the 
inhabitants are white. These also have keener senses 
than we, and their stature is from ten to fourteen feet. 
It is also said that they live without sickness to the 
ripe old age of one thousand years. 

In the Buddhist conception of the place of man in 
the world and his possible power over the world, we 
everywhere find a characteristic impatience of anything 
like ordinary limitations. 

To begin with origins, men were gods before they 
were men. The first men came down from the twelfth 
heaven and came into their present abodes by what is 
called the apparitional birth. At that time there was 
no difference of sex among them, and the glory radiating 
from their bodies was so great that there was no necessity 
for sun or moon. They could soar through the air at 
will, and their lives of peace and innocent happiness 
extended through a period of 100,000 years. With 
every renewal of the infinite series of world-cycles men 
came back to this pristine glory and power and longevity. 

But even now, in this worst of the component ages 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 147 

or the present world-cycle, it is hard to set any limit 
to human powers and possibilities. It is true that most 
men are ignorant, but if a man covets knowledge and 
will practise the right regimen, he can come to such 
insight that he can see back in his own history through 
a hundred thousand births and beyond, recalling every 
event that gave him pleasure or pain. Men seem to 
be of limited powers of locomotion, but by the right 
regimen, even here on earth, a man may gain the power 
to visit other worlds, even the worlds of the gods, at 
will. Men generally seem to have little power over the 
elements, but by the right use of the so-called Kasinas 
any man can pass through ramparts of stone, create 
winds and rains, walk on the water, and subdue fire 
by the superior intensity of the light proceeding from 
his own eyes. Men seem subject to death, but in 
reality even the weakest and lowest and vilest of men 
never dies: he simply passes the gateway of one more 
birth and with royal port proceeds with the further 
exploration of the world-house, in every part of which 
he is sure at one time or another to have his habitation. 

It would be interesting, at this point, to visit other 
realms and races in our strange sakwala. Its hells are 
as interesting and as numerous as its heavens. Those 
beneath Jambu-dvipa are as elaborately laid out and 
subdivided as Dante's Inferno. The durations of pun- 
ishment are frightfully protracted. Thus in the Tapana- 
hell the period is 16,000 years, and of those infernal 
years each day and night is equal to 51,840,000,000 of 
our years. 

Leaving the hells of fire and hells of frost, we might 
visit the contiguous regions occupied by the Pretas. 
These are the most multiform, the most ill-looking, 
ill-feeling, ill-smelling, and ill-acting ghouls that a 



148 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

luxuriant Oriental imagination has ever been able to 
create. From that abode it would be a positive relief 
to betake ourselves to the submarine metropolis and 
royal city of the Nagas, or Dragons. Of these there 
are five orders or races, and their supreme kings are 
among the most powerful of beings. They have under 
the Great Sea palaces as splendid as that mentioned 
as in the heaven of King Sakra. Two of these Dragon 
Kings, Nanda and Upananda, are said to be the largest 
of all sentient beings, "being able to infold Mount Meru 
seven times round, their heads above the top of it and 
their tails in the deep sea." This would imply a length 
of at least two or three millions of miles. 

This reminds me of a famous prehistoric event fre- 
quently alluded to in Hindu mythology. It seems that 
at the dawn of the history of our present world, one 
of these royal snakeships, Vasuki by name, was dis- 
playing his million-leagued length rather aggravatingly 
on Mount Meru, with a coil or two round the middle 
of the mountain just to hold on the better, when, sud- 
denly, the mischievous gods came down on one side 
and the Asura demons came up on the other, and the 
one party seizing him by the head and the other by 
the tail, they began pulling, first this way, and then 
that, in rhythmic alternations, so that the mountain, 
big as it was, was made to spin round like an Oriental 
drill, first to the right, and then to the left, in a manner 
astonishing to behold. This certainly was colossal 
sport for the gods and demons. But the King of Snakes, 
enraged at the indignity, spat floods of venom over the 
demons, and though devils may be able to stand a 
good deal of venom, as a kind of native element, these 
at last got more than they could stand and were glad 
to desist. All, however, is well that ends well; and this 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 149 

prank of the playful gods and demons ended in great 
good. You remember that the mountain stands in an 
ocean of the purest and richest imaginable milk. It 
came to pass, therefore, that these revolutions and 
counter-revolutions of the mountain in it had the same 
effect as the movement of a rotary churn, and the 
result was the milk-ocean was churned and churned to 
a charm. For out of the churning there came forth 
1 'Seven Precious Things," the seven highest treasures of 
the world. One of these was Lakshmi, the goddess of 
beauty, excelling all other beauties in the world. An- 
other was the primordial Jewel, fairer than all others, 
mother of all others, in the world. Another was the 
Parijata, or Tree of the Heavenly Paradise, ante type 
and paragon of all the trees that ever grew. And so on 
and on. As a consequence of this famous churning of 
the ocean and the production of these seven world- 
treasures, the universe has always been the richer for the 
practical joke played upon Vasuki by the sportive gods 
and demons. 1 

But while this system of cosmography and geography 
and natural history is wrought out to the minutest 
details, we must not suppose that the resulting cosmos 
is regarded as possessing a changeless and finished 
fixity. The world that now is had a beginning and will 
have an end. A world upon the same general plan 
preceded it, another after an almost immeasurable 
duration will follow. To the series no mind of man or 
god can discover a beginning, no mind an end. More- 
over, while all that we have been exploring has been 
within the one enlarged Homeric world-shell with which 

1 A very remarkable picture of this churning of the ocean may be 
seen on page 245 of a rare old work, entitled Denckwuerdige Gesandt- 
schafften der Oest-Indischen an unterschiedliche Keyser von Japan, ron 
Arnold Montanus, folio, Amsterdam, 1669. 



150 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

we began, we find that the authors of this -cosmology 
have not been content with one such sakwala, but have 
broken through the very walls of what seemed to be 
the total universe, and found other worlds outside and 
beyond. And each of these is equipped with a Mount 
Mem and with these vast concentric oceans, and inter- 
vening continents, and with island-continents and 
heavens of sense, and heavens of form, and heavens of 
formlessness, like the one in which we live. And what 
is the number of these outer worlds? Ten thousand is 
a figure often met, but this is only the unit of a higher 
calculus. Ten thousand of these decachiliad world- 
groups constitute a higher unitary group; and again 
ten thousand of these inconceivable aggregations con- 
stitute the "authority-domain" of merely one of the 
innumerable Buddhas provided for in the beginningless 
and endless ongoing of the universe. Accordingly, in 
the Visuddhi-Magga we read that any Buddha has three 
domains; and that the first, or birth-domain, comprises 
ten thousand worlds; but the second, or his authority- 
domain, comprises one hundred thousand times ten 
million worlds; while his knowledge-domain is endless 
and boundless. In fact, the Buddhist conception ap- 
pears to be that illimitable space is close packed, tier 
on tier, with infinite millions of sakwalas like that in 
which we have been making explorations, and that even 
the interlying spaces which these spheroidal worlds from 
the nature of their form cannot fill are utilized as hells 
of ineffable frigidness — hells far more unendurable than 
any of the infernos of fire and frost to be found under 
our earth and under the earth in each of the other 
sakwalas innumerable. Whether these infinite tiers of 
spheroidal worlds are so arranged that the human-end 
of each world is upward as we count upwardness, or 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 151 

whether by inversion of position the heavens of the 
world immediately above our own are next our Brahma- 
heavens, bringing the twenty-sixth in each system into 
contiguity, I cannot say. Some things seem to favor 
the latter supposition. In other words, comparing the 
worlds to eggs, there is some evidence to show that in 
the egg-basket of illimitable space each tier of world-eggs 
is so packed that the pointed ends in one tier always 
adjoin the pointed ends in the tier below, and, vice 
versa, the same would hold of the broader ends. In 
either case, by including and utilizing as hells the 
spaces unoccupied by worlds, this system of thought — 
as if, like nature, abhorring a vacuum — makes universal 
space an absolute plenum. Though space may remain 
an infinite abysm, it at least is not empty and yawning 
and meaningless. 

But am I not forgetting that remarkable oblation of 
which I was to speak? Not at all. Every word I have 
uttered has been needful for its full understanding. In- 
deed, even now so many more preliminaries are needful 
that I hesitate to proceed. The lapsing moments, how- 
ever, warn me that I must. 

Has it ever occurred to you that, at some time, 
somewhere, in some thoughtful soul, the question must 
have arisen, What is the greatest of all possible offer- 
ings that I can bring and lay upon the altar of my 
God? In lands and times in which religious offerings 
were brought by hundreds and thousands and tens of 
thousands, the difference between the costly and the 
commonplace — between the petty and the unprecedented 
— would be often noted and would inevitably suggest 
that question. Here is the monarch with his hecatomb 
of fattened beeves, the wealthy merchant with his five 
or ten unblemished bullocks, the youthful bridegroom 



152 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

with his single Iamb, the indigent mother with her two 
small pigeons — all equally appropriate because sincerely 
adjusted to ability. But what of their intrinsic value, 
and what gift of mortal would be worthiest of the god? 

I know not when, or where, or in what mind, this 
question first found answer, but certain it seems that in 
some Lamaistic mind it found an answer sublimely 
beautiful. The answer was that no religious offering 
was worthy of the Highest that was less than the total 
universe of finite being with all the precious things 
therein. And having reached this insight the authors 
of the Lamaistic ritual provided that each day in the 
round year, in every temple, this supreme, this ideal 
offering should be offered up. The result is the Mandala 
Oblation of which this paper treats. 

The solemn ceremony is singularly impressive. Let us 
watch, premising only that unlike the earliest Buddhists 
these Tibetan ones conceive of the Buddhas, not as 
extinct personalities, but rather as ineffable immortal 
intelligences who have extricated themselves from the 
total world-process, and now in supermundane glory and 
peace compassionate the beings still entangled in the 
round of endless transmigrations. In the presence of 
these ineffably exalted ones our priest appears. On 
great occasions and in the greater temples an elaborate 
series of ritual acts precedes the Mandala Oblation. 
This, however, is the culminating act of the entire 
service. At the proper time, after the tinkling of the 
altar-bell, the priest reverently wipes clean a conse- 
crated tray and places it upon the altar before him. 
Then with his two hands he sprinkles some rice grains 
on the tray, saying that by this symbolic act he lays 
"the golden foundation of the universe.' ' Then he sets 
upon the tray a large metallic ring which he reverently 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 153 

names as "the iron girdle of the universe." Then with 
similar descriptive words he deposits in the center of 
the ring a pinch of rice to represent the king of moun- 
tains, Mount Meru. Next, near the rim of the cosmic 
ring, in the midst of the outermost of the concentric 
oceans, he deposits, first in the far East, next in the far 
South, next in the far West, and next in the far North, 
the four pinches which represent Jambu-dvlpa and the 
three other island-continents. With every pinch he 
gives the name of the continent intended, and we are 
told that throughout the entire ceremony "it is specially 
insisted on that the officiant must mentally conceive 
that he is actually bestowing all this wealth of conti- 
nents, gods, etc., etc., upon his Lamaist deities who 
themselves are quite outside the system of the universe." 
Next, to represent the island-world the priest deposits 
each side of each island-continent two other doles of 
rice representing the eight so-called satellite-continents, 
which he names in their order. Then as each of the 
four island-continents has a supreme treasure possessed 
of magical virtue — the East one a jewel-mountain, the 
South one a wish-granting tree, the West one a wish- 
granting cow, and the North one a wish-granting soil 
of magical fertility — the priest names each of these 
world-treasures and at each naming makes in its proper 
place a rice-deposit. This finishes what we may call 
the first story of the universe. To represent the second 
there is placed above the first ring a second, somewhat 
narrower, but of equal height. This is to include the 
symbols of the best and most precious things in the 
regions between us and the highest mundane heaven. 
First come the so-called "Seven Precious Things." 
Beginning once more at the East, and once more passing 
round by quarter circles, he names and indicates with 



154 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

the rice-doles the first four. Then in the intervening 
spaces follow the symbols of the remaining three, and 
of the fourfold Vase of Great Treasure, which came into 
being the moment of the birth of Buddha. After these 
celestial treasures the inhabitants of these celestial 
regions must be represented. For this purpose eight 
maternal demigoddesses are selected. These are named 
in order, and beginning at the East, as before, the 
station of each is indicated by a rice-dole close to those 
of the Precious Things, a trifle closer to the center of 
the circle. With this the second story of the universe 
is finished. 

Then is superimposed the third ring, narrower than 
the second but of greater height. Here must be symbol- 
ized the splendor and the sovereignty and the power and 
the life found only in the topmost mundane heavens. 
To mark this splendor the priest places a rice-dole in 
the East and names the sun, then one in the West and 
names the moon. A dole n the South represents the 
jeweled "World-umbrella of Universal Sovereignty," one 
in the North the " World-banner of Universal Victory." 
The life in these highest heavens alone remains thus 
far unsymbolized. Pausing a moment, the priest rever- 
ently deposits his thirty-eighth and final rice-dole on 
the holy center and summit of his whole oblation, 
declaring it the symbol of the most accomplished and 
the wealthiest beings of the universe, the living gods, 
the tenants of the highest heavens. 

A pause ensues. Then, interspersed with other pauses 
and with prostrations and lif tings-up of the hands, seven 
prayers are heard. And these are the prayers*. 

"I offer you all these constituent parts of the universe in 
their entirety, O noble, kind, and holy Lama, O tutelary gods 
of the round world and all the hosts of Buddhas and Bodhisats!" 



THE MANDALA OBLATION 155 

"I beg you all to accept these offerings for the benefit of all 
animated beings!" 

"I offer you, O Buddhas, on a foundation of incense and flowers 
the four continents, and Mount Meru adorned with sun and moon ! ' ' 

"I offer you, O assembly of all the perfected supreme ones 
of the outside, inside, and hidden regions, the entire wealth 
and substance of all these ideal regions. I beg you all to grant 
us the best of all real gifts, and especially that real gift of spir- 
itual insight, the 'great ultimate perfection'!" 

"I offer up this fresh Mandala-oblation, through the virtue 
of which let no injury beset the path of purity, but let us have 
the grace of the Jinas of the three times, and let us, the innu- 
merable animated beings, be delivered from this illusive world." 

"I offer up salutations, offerings, confessions of sins, and 
repentance. Whatever virtue has been accumulated by myself 
and others, let it go to the attainment of our great end." 

"With my whole heart and body I humbly prostrate myself 
three times to all who are worthy of worship. Let glory come!" 

Here end the prayers in solemn silence, and with a 
thrice-repeated prostration of the worshiper, and with 
a priestly benediction, the congregation is dismissed. 

Not soon, if ever, can I forget the moment when after 
blindly bringing together from diverse sources a mass 
of fragmentary facts on this act of worship my mind 
first caught sight of its sublime, all-interpreting inward 
significance. A moment I was filled with speechless 
admiration; the next I was abashed and humiliated. I 
straightway fell upon my knees and bowed myself low 
before the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, entreating 
forgiveness that in my narrowness of vision and weak- 
ness of faith I had never reached the level of my Lamaist 
brothers' conception of the scope, and dignity, and 
power, and privilege of human intercessorship. 

Incited by his example, I asked to know more of the 
essential and indestructible priesthood of every true 
worshiper in behalf of all beings animate and inanimate. 



156 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Led on as never before, I then and there lifted up in 
my own priestly hands church after church, nation after 
nation, continent after continent, planet after planet, 
creature-order after creature-order, until upon my arms 
of faith I held upborne the total universe of finite beings. 
Then, as face to face with God, with emotions too deep 
for tears, I cried: 

"A part of all, I speak for all — I pray for all — I offer 
all — I dedicate all to Thee. In all, by all, through all 
that Thy creative will hath caused to be, Thy will be 
done!" 

I hardly need add that to one soul at least the "glory 
came." 

From that memorable hour to this it has been easy 
for me to pray a larger prayer than ever before. And 
I love to think that in far-off Central Asia devout, wide- 
thoughted, mystic men — whatever their superstitions — 
are daily schooling and preparing millions for that 
promised day when all this universe shall be one temple, 
and all beings one congregation of united worshipers, 
and when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, 
of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things 
under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

And I love to think that then shall come the long and 
strangely prefigured, the final and all-consummating 
Mandala Oblation. It will be in that same illimitable 
world-temple, in the presence of that same worshiping 
assembly, in the moment when the great High Priest 
and King of all that he has created shall in pierced hands 
uplift the total kingdom of perfected creaturehood and 
deliver it up to God, even the Father, that God may 
be all in all. 

Even so, Lord Jesus, let this glory come! 



SECTION II— HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 

So herrscht gleich iiber den Ort wo die Unterwelt zu denken sei ein 
merkwiirdiger Zwiespalt. — Prdler. 

Bei Homer ist eine doppelte Ansicht von der Lage des Todtenreiches 
zu erkennen, einmal unter der Erde, und dann wiederum auf der Ober- 
flache des Bodens in dem ewigen Dunkel jenseits des westiichen Ocean. 
Die Ansichten von den beiden Hades fliessen bestandig durcheinander. 
So weit aber die mit jedem verbundenen Vorstellungen zu sondern und 
einzeln aufzufassen moglich ist, mussen wir sie darzulegen im Folgenden 
versuchen. — Volcker. 

Where does Homer locate the realm of Hades? 

In the whole broad field of Homeric scholarship it 
would be difficult to find a more fascinating question. 
Few have been more written upon. The literature of 
the subject is itself almost a library. No mythologist, 
no commentator upon the poet, no class-room inter- 
preter even, can evade the question; and yet, in their 
answers, the Homeric authorities of all modern times, 
whatever their nationality, present only a pitiable 
spectacle of helpless bewilderment. Classifying these 
various interpreters according to the answers they 
respectively give to the question propounded, they 
stand as follows: 

First, a class who content themselves with the general 
assertion that the earth of Homer was a "flat disk," 
and that his Hades, like that of the ancients generally, 
was undoubtedly conceived of as a dark recess or cavern 
in the bosom of this earth-disk. Anything in the 
Odyssey or elsewhere inconsistent with this view is 
simply a play of poetic fancy. 

Second, a class — if class it be — who say with the 
genial Wilhelm Jordan, "Das Hadesreich der Odyssee 

157 



158 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

ist die von der Sonne abgekehrte Riickseite der Erd- 
scheibe, die avr£6W, Gegenerde, eines weit spateren Zeit- 
alters. Von der Zetdwpo? apoopa und vom Gotterhimmel 
aus betrachtet bleibt es allerdings Unterwelt, bno xeO0e<Tt 
yac«?, aber nicht als Erdinneres, sondern als jenseitige 
Oberflache." 1 Here the earth is still a flat disk; but 
Hades, instead of being within it, is simply its under or 
reverse side. 

Third, a class who locate the shadowy realm on the 
same plane with the inhabited earth, but in the far 
West, just inside the Ocean-stream. This includes all 
commentators who, locating Hades above ground in 
the West, place Kirke's isle in the same quarter, and 
hold that Odysseus did not cross over the Ocean- 
stream. 

Fourth, a class who locate it in the far West, just 
outside the Ocean-stream. This includes all commenta- 
tors who, locating Hades above ground in the West, 
place Kirke's isle in the same quarter, but hold that 
Odysseus crossed the Ocean-stream. 2 

Fifth, a class who locate it in the far East, just inside 
the Ocean-stream. This class includes all who place 
Kirke's isle in the East, and hold that Odysseus did 

1 Fleckeisen's Jahrbucher, 1872, vol. cv, pp. 1-8. 

2 Rinck, Die Religion der Hettenen, Th. ii, p. 459 : "Bei Homer ist das 
Schattenreich noch keine Unterwelt, sondern jenes Hegt ausser dem von 
der Sonne beschienenen Bereich der Erde, jenseits des Okeanos." Here, 
and in some other writers, along with a retention of the unity of the 
authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, we find an intimation that the per- 
plexing discrepancy in Greek representations of Hades is due to a gradual 
translocation of it from the far West to the interior of the earth, in con- 
sequence of advancing geographical knowledge. Perhaps a separate 
class should have been introduced, consisting of the representatives of 
this view. But had this been done, yet a fourteenth class would have 
been necessary to include those who, with Charles Francis Keary, exactly 
reverse the process, and make the oldest Greek Hades interterranean, 
and the trans-oceanic one at the West a later product. The Mythology 
of the Eddast London* 1882, p. 14. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 159 

not cross the Ocean-stream in visiting the superter- 
ranean Hades. 

Sixth, a class who locate it in the far East, just out- 
side the Ocean-stream. This includes all who place 
Kirke's isle in the East, and hold that Odysseus crossed 
the Ocean-stream in visiting the superterranean Hades. 

Seventh, a class who try to harmonize the conflicting 
representations by making the one set of expressions 
relate to a Hades in the bosom of the flat earth, and 
the other set of expressions relate to "the entrance" 
of the passage leading down to it from the world of 
living men. This class is again subdivided into four 
subclasses, according as they maintain a cis-oceanic or 
trans-oceanic location of this mouth of Hades, and place 
it to the East or to the West of the poet. 

Eighth, a class who hold that the difficulty is in the 
poet himself, he having got two incompatible mythologies 
mixed up together. 

Ninth, a class who try to solve all discrepancies by 
assigning the different representations in the two poems, 
and in different parts of the same poem, to different 
ages and to different authors. 

Tenth, a class who query whether or no it be not 
admissible to hold that Homer had two realms of Hades, 
—the one "subterranean/ ' and the other "beyond the 
Ocean." 

Eleventh, a class who, with Altenburg and Gerland, 
resolve the whole story of Odysseus's descent to Hades 
into an astronomical myth 1 ; or with Cox see in it simply 
a mythologico-poetic expression for the prosaic fact that 
the Sun, the "lord of day," returning after his morn- 



1 "Odysseus in der TJnterwelt," Archiv fur Philologie, 1840, pp. 170- 
188. G. K. C. Gerland, Altgriechische Marchen in der Odyssee, Magdeburg, 
1869, p. 50. 



160 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

ing and noontide wanderings to his western home, some- 
times finds it necessary to make his way behind dark 
clouds. 1 

Twelfth, a class who point out the manifest difficulties 
of the problem, but frankly profess their utter inability 
to present a solution. 

Of the more important of the maps of "the world 
according to Homer/' those of Bunbury, Volcker, and 
Forbiger are constructed according to the view of class 
fourth; that of Ukert, according to the view of that 
division of class seventh who locate the Hades portal 
in the far West, just inside the Ocean-stream; that of 
Gladstone, 2 according to the view of that division of 
class seventh who locate the Hades portal in the far 
East, just inside the Ocean-stream. Volcker, however, 
is inclined to believe in two Homeric Hades-realms — the 
one interterranean, the other at the West superterranean 
and trans-oceanic. 

Such are the multifarious, contradictory, confused, 
and despairing answers given to our question by the 
most learned and eminent of Homeric scholars. It 
would be an easy task to fill a volume with citations 
illustrating these various positions, and the ingenious 
but mutually destructive arguments by which their 
respective advocates have sought to establish them. It 
will be more profitable to turn from such a Babel of 
ideas, over which the darkness of Hades itself seems to 
have fallen, and inquire what the poet himself has to 
say on the subject. 



1 Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii, 171-180. 

2 Mr. Gladstone has more recently abandoned the flat-earth theory, 
and tentatively advocated an interterranean Hades with its mouth down- 
ward. See his Primer, London and New York, 1878, pp. 54-57; and 
Homeric Synchronism, London, 1876, p. 231. Perhaps this view also 
should have been included in ths foregoing classification. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 161 

The region of the dead is represented in Homer as 
one of perpetual night. Its name is Erebos. 1 From the 
name of the divinity presiding in it, it is generally called 
the house or abode of Aides (Hades). 2 That it was 
conceived of as underneath the earth appears from the 
perpetually recurring expressions, both in the Iliad and 
in the Odyssey, relating the descent into and ascent out 
of it. s In certain passages it is, in fact, expressly spoken 
of as "under the earth" 4 ; in others, as "under the re- 
cesses of the earth." 5 Hence Aides himself is styled 
Zeu? xarazOdvios, "the Subterranean Zeus." 6 



* "Denomination assyrienne." — Felix Robiou, Questions Homeriques, 
Paris, 1876, p. 13. The Semitic origin of this term is significant. It 
prepares us to find an agreement between the Homeric and the Assyrio- 
Babylonian ideas of the realm of the dead. Mr. Gladstone says, "Long 
before ... I had been struck by the predominance of a foreign character 
and associations in the Homeric Underworld of the eleventh Odyssey." — ■ 
Homeric Synchronism, London, 1876, p. 213. On the remarkably ex- 
pressive cuneiform ideograph for eribu, see the explanation given by 
Robert Brown, Jun., in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeol- 
ogy, May 4, 1880. 

2 This term is also believed to be of Oriental origin, exactly correspond- 
ing to the Bit Edi of the Akkadians. See the translations of The Descent 
of Istar. "Talbot regards, and I think justly, the usual etymology of 
Hades — quasi Aides, 'invisible' — as an afterthought." — Robert Brown, 
Jun., The Myth of Kirke, p. 11 In. 

a Iliad, vi, 284; vii, 330; xiv, 457; xxii, 425. Odyssey, x, 174, 560; 
xi, 65, 164, 475, 624; xxiii, 252; xxiv, 10, etc. "Von einem besondern 
Eingang zu diesem unterirdischen Hades," remarks Volcker (Homerische 
Geographie, p. 141), "meldet der Dichter nichts; vielmehr gehen die 
Seelen, durch nichts gehindert, begraben und unbegraben uberall unter 
die Erde." Granting this, there is no ground for his other assertion, 
"Dieser Hades ist nicht unter, sondern in der Erde." The immaterial 
shade can as easily pass through the whole globe to an opposite surface 
as through a thick crust to a central cavern. But see Mr. Gladstone's 
Homeric Synchronism, p. 222 : "There is not in all Homer a single passage 
which imports the idea, or indicates the possibility, of our passing 
through the solid earth." 

* Iliad, xxiii, 100; xviii, 333. 

» Odyssey, xxiv, 204. Comp. Iliad, xxii, 482. 

8 Iliad, ix, 457. Comp. iii, 278; xix, 259; xx, 61 Comp. Herodotus, 
ii, 122. 



162 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

In the Battle of the Gods there is a vivid picture of 
this underworld and of its trembling king: 

Thus the blessed gods inciting, both sides engaged, and 
among them made severe contention to break out. But dread- 
fully from above thundered the Father of gods and men, while 
beneath Poseidon shook the boundless earth and the lofty 
summits of the mountains. The roots and all the summits 
of many-rilled Ida were shaken, and the city of the Trojans 
and the ships of the Greeks. Aides himself, king of the nether 
world, trembled beneath, and leaped up from his throne terri- 
fied, and shouted aloud, lest earth-shaking Poseidon should 
cleave asunder the earth over him, and disclose to mortals and 
immortals his mansions, terrible, squalid, which even the gods 
loathe. 1 

But while the abode of Aides is thus clearly repre- 
sented as under the earth, it is nevertheless represented 
as just across the Ocean-river, and capable of being 
reached by ship. In the eleventh and twelfth books 
of the Odyssey, the voyage of Odysseus to this region 
is described in the same apparently literal nautical 
terms as is the voyage to the Land of the Lotus-Eaters. 
And of his interview with the dead, Hayman says, 
"The whole scene is conceived by the poet as enacted 
on a geographical extension of the earth beyond the 
Ocean-stream." 2 There is no hint of any descent into 
the interior of the earth, no passage through or into 
subterranean caverns. The journey is as natural in all 



1 Iliad, xx, 61 ff. That there may be no question as to the impar- 
tiality of the translations given in this paper, the well-known and 
widely circulated version by Theodore Alois Buckley, of Christ Church, 
Oxford, is followed. A version giving more accurately the force of the 
verbs expressing upward and downward motion would in many passages 
be more favorable to the cosmologicai view here presented. 

2 Henry Hayman, D.D., The Odyssey of Homer, London, 1866, vol. ii, 
Appendix G 3, p. xvii. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 163 

its aspects as any voyage from one coast of the Atlantic 
to its opposite. 1 Thus opens the eleventh book: 

But when we were come down to the ship and the sea, we 
first of all drew the ship into the divine sea, and we placed a 
mast and sails in the black ship. And taking the sheep we 
put them on board, and we ourselves also embarked grieving, 
shedding the warm tear. And fair-haired Kirke (Circe) — an 
awful goddess, possessing human speech — 6ent behind our 
dark-blue-pro wed ship a moist wind that filled the sails, an 
excellent companion. And we sat down, making use of each of 
the instruments in the ship, and the wind and the pilot directed 
it. And the sails of it passing over the sea were stretched 
out the whole day; and the sun set, and all the ways were 
overshadowed. And it reached the extreme boundaries of the 
deep-flowing Ocean,' where are the people and city of the 
Kimmerians covered with shadow and vapor, nor does the 
shining sun behold them with his beams, neither when he goes 
toward the starry heaven, nor when he turns back again from 
heaven to earth, but pernicious night is spread over hapless 
mortals. Having come there we drew up our ship, and we took 
out the sheep, and we ourselves went again to the stream of 
the Ocean, until we came to the place which Kirke mentioned. 

Here the hero performed the rites and held the con- 
sultation which Kirke had previously prescribed in 
these terms: 

"0 noble son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, do not 
remain any longer in my house against your will. But first 
you must perform another voyage, and come to the house of 
Aides and awful Persephone, to consult the soul of Theban 
Tiresias, a blind prophet, whose mind is firm. To him, even 
when dead, Persephone has given understanding, alone to be 
prudent, but the rest flit about as shades." 

"Who, O Kirke, will conduct me on this voyage? No one 
has yet come to Aides in a black ship." 



1 "Von einem Hinabsteigen findet sich keine Spur. Wer beweisen 
karui, Odysseus sei im Innern der Erde gewesen, der versuche es \" — 
Volcker, Homerische Geographic, p. 150. 

■ That is, the farther shore. See Volcker, p. 145. 



164 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

"O noble son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, let not 
the desire of a guide for thy ship be at all a care to thee; but 
having erected the mast, and spread out the white sails, sit 
down, and let the blast of the North wind carry it. But when 
thou shalt have passed through the Ocean in thy ship, where 
is the easy-dug 1 shore and the groves of Persephone, and tall 
poplars, and fruit-destroying willows, there draw up thy ship 
in the deep-eddying Ocean, and do thou thyself go to the spa- 
cious house of Aides. Here indeed both Pyriphlegethon and 
Cocytus, which is a stream from the water of Styx, flow into 
Acheron; and there is a rock, and the meeting of two loud- 
sounding rivers. There then, O hero, approaching near as I 
command thee, dig a trench the width of a cubit each way; 
and pour around it libations to all the dead, first with mixed 
honey, then with sweet wine, and again the third time with 
water, and sprinkle white meal over it. And entreat much the 
powerless heads of the dead, promising that when thou comest 
to Ithaca thou wilt offer up in thy palace a barren heifer, which- 
soever is the best, and wilt fill the pyre with excellent things, 
and that thou wilt sacrifice to Tiresias alone a black sheep, all 
black, which excels among thy sheep. But when thou shalt 
have entreated the illustrious nations of the dead with prayers, 
then sacrifice a male sheep and a black female, turning to- 
ward Erebos; and do thou thyself be turned away at a dis- 
tance, going toward the streams of the river; but there many 
souls of those gone dead will come. Then immediately exhort 
thy companions and command them, having skinned the sheep 
which lie there slain with the unpitying brass, to burn them 
and to invoke the gods, both mighty Aides and dread Per- 
sephone. And do thou, having drawn thy sharp sword from 
thy thigh, sit down, nor suffer the powerless heads of the dead 
to go near the blood before thou inquirest of Tiresias. Then 
the prophet will immediately come to thee, O leader of the 
people, who will tell to thee the voyage and the measures of 
the way and thy return, how thou mayest go over the fishy 



» Buckley well expresses dissatisfaction with this rendering. Volcker 
translates the term "ein niedriges Gestade." It is perhaps the low-down 
shore as contrasted with the upper or opposite one. 

• Odyssey, x, 488-540. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 165 

In the following passage Odysseus narrates how, 
having arrived "at the place which Kirke mentioned/' 
he fulfilled her commission: 

Then Perimedes and Eurylochos made sacred offerings; but 
I, drawing my sharp sword from my thigh, dug a trench the 
width of a cubit each way, and around it we poured libations 
to all the dead, first with mixed honey, then with sweet wine, 
again a third time with water, and I sprinkled white meal over 
it. And I much besought the unsubstantial heads of the dead, 
promising that when I came to Ithaca I would offer up in my 
palace a barren heifer, whichsoever is the best, and that I would 
sacrifice separately to Tiresias alone a sheep all black, which 
excels among our sheep. But when I had besought them, the 
nations of the dead, with vows and prayers, then taking the 
sheep, I cut off their heads into the trench, and the black blood 
flowed; and the souls of the perished dead were assembled 
forth from Erebos — betrothed girls and youths, and much- 
enduring old men, and tender virgins having a newly grieved 
mind, and many Mars-renowned men wounded with brass- 
tipped spears, possessing gore-besmeared arms, who in great 
numbers were wandering about the trench on different sides 
with a divine clamor; and pale fear seized upon me. Then 
at length exhorting my companions, I commanded them, having 
skinned the sheep which lay there, slain with the cruel brass, 
to burn them, and to invoke the gods, both Aides and Per- 
sephone\ But I, having drawn my sharp sword from my thigh, 
sat down; nor did I suffer the powerless heads of the dead to 
draw nigh the blood, before I inquired of Tiresias. 

So far it might appear uncertain whether the hero 
were really in Hades, or only near it, at some point 
accessible alike to the living and to the dead. But the 
lines immediately following show that he was truly in 
"the house of Aides": 

And first the soul of my companion Elpenor came, for he 
was not yet buried beneath the wide-wayed earth; for we left 
his body in the palace of Kirke, unwept-for and unburied, 
since another toil then urged us. Beholding him I wept, and 



166 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

pitied him in my mind; and, addressing him, spoke winged 
words: "0 Elpenor, how didst thou come under the dark west? 
Thou hast come sooner on foot than I with a black ship." 

Thus I spoke, but he groaning answered me in discourse: 
"O Zeus-born son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, the 
evil destiny of the deity and the abundant wine hurt me. Ly- 
ing down in the palace of Kirke, I did not think to go down 
backward, having come to the long ladder; but I fell downward 
from the roof, and my neck was broken from the vertebrae, and 
my soul descended to Hades." 

In line 69, Elpenor speaks of Odysseus "going hence 
from the house of Aides"; and in line 164, as elsewhere 
(x, 502; xi, 59, 158; xii, 21; xxiii, 324), the expressions 
leave no chance to doubt that Odysseus's voyage was 
a genuine descensus ad inferos. 1 

Here, then, are the two grand tests of every proposed 
solution of the problem of the location of the Homeric 
Hades: 

I. Its Hades must be underneath the earth; and, 

II. It must be on the surface of the earth, beyond tJie 
Ocean. 

This strange and perplexing difference, not to say 
contradiction, in the Homeric representations did not 
escape the notice of the older commentators and writers 
on mythology. Especially has it called out the ingenuity 
of German scholars. F. A. Wolf recognized it, but did 
not profess to be able to give an explanation. J. H. Voss 
invented the method of solving the problem by placing 
Hades itself within the bosom of the earth-disk, but its 
"entrance" on the westernmost point of Europe on the 
inner shore of the ocean. Volcker rejected this solution, 



1 See Preller, Mythologie, vol. i, pp. 504, 505, where he says that the 
region visited was "die ganze und wirkliche Unterwelt, nicht etwas 
bloss ein Eingang in die Unterwelt." See also Volcker, Homerische 
Geographic, 76. 



HOxMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 167 

but, in the absence of a better, cautiously suggested — as 
we have seen — the possibility of Homer's having held 
to two kingdoms of the dead, one within the earth, and 
one in the dark trans-oceanic West. 1 Eggers 2 and 
Nitzsch 3 inclined to the support of the Vossian com- 
promise; and in 1854 Preller could still speak of it as 
the one "at present chiefly prevalent." 4 Still, as Preller 
and others urged, nothing in the descriptions of the 
western Hades corresponds with the idea of a "portal" 
or "entrance" to a subterranean world extending so 
far eastward as to be situated under Greece and Asia 
Minor: 5 hence the latest interpreters have been as free 
as were the earlier to take their choice among the wild 
and contradictory conjectures classified at the beginning 
of this paper. The latest of these guesses is that of 
Jordan; and, though it comes within a hair's breadth 
of the truth, it has been the most ridiculed of all. 1 



As pointed out in earlier pages, the one false principle 
which has vitiated and confused all modern discussions 
of Homeric cosmology is the groundless notion that the 
earth of Homer is a flat disk. This mistaken presup- 

^This, if allowed, would afford no relief; for, as Hentze says, "the 
subterranean character of even the Odyssean Hades can by no means 
be got rid of." Ameis, Anhang., book x, 508. 

2 .De Oreo Homerico, Altona, 1836. But Eggers located the Hades 
entrance inside the Ocean-stream, Nitzsch outside. 

■ G.W. Nitzsch, Erklarende Anmerkungen zu Homers Odyssee, Hannover, 
1840, Bd. iii, p. xxxv, 187. 

*GriecMsche Mythologie, i, p. 505. 

•See Preller, Mythologie, vol. i, p. 504. Eisenlohr, Lage des Horner- 
ischen Todtenreichs, 1872. Bunbury contents himself with the cool re- 
mark, "It is certainly not worth while to inquire what geographical idea 
the poet formed in his own mind of this visit to the regions of Hades." ( !) 
History of Ancient Geography, vol. i, p. 58. 

6 See Kammer, Einheit der Odyssee nach Widerlegung der Ansichten von 
Lachmann-Steinthal, Kdchly, Hennings, vnd Kirchhoff, Leipsic, 1873 
pp. 486-490. 



16S THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

position is responsible for the failure of all hitherto 
attempted demonstrations of the true location of the 
poet's Hades. Once conceive of the Homeric Cosmos 
as represented in the accompanying cut of the "World 
of Homer/ ' and the problem of the site of Hades is 
solved at a glance. It is the southern or under hem- 
isphere of the upright spherical earth. In this concep- 
tion, whatsoever is " trans-oceanic" is also and of 
necessity "subterranean." Now for the first time can it 
be understood how Leda and her noble-minded sons can 
be "on a geographical extension of the earth" on the 
farther shore of the Ocean, and at the same time vipOev 
rw (Odyssey, xi, 298). In this Cosmos, Hades cannot 
be beyond the Ocean without being also underneath the 
earth. On the traditional theory of a flat earth, the 
passage is and ever must be the palpable inconsistency 
which Volcker represents it. Even the theory of two 
or of twenty Homers does not reasonably explain it. 
Precisely so with the passages relating to Elpenor. His 
soul at death goes xard x0ov6$ } yet it is found with the 
other ghosts in the shadowy land just across the Ocean- 
river. So again with the passages relating to the shades 
of the slain Suitors. These reach the Underworld 
(xxiv, 106, 203); but it is by a route along the surface 
of the ground to the Ocean-stream, in full sight of the 
gates of the sun and of the stars of the Milky Way 
(xxiv, 9-12) .* Illustrious scholars have accused the poet 
of Widerspruche grober und drger than usual in this 
account 2 ; but the whole trouble has been, not in the poet, 
but in the poet's interpreters. With the spherical earth, 
all is consistent and precisely as it should be. In this 



1 Porphyrius, De antro Nympharum, 28, explains that stumbling-block 
of commentators, "the people of dreams." 
2 „ Volcker, Homerische Geographie, p. 152. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 



169 



reconstructed Homeric Cosmos, every crosser of the 
Ocean-stream, whether it be Hermes, or Odysseus, or 
Herakles, reaches the groves of Persephone and the 
house of Aides. Wherever Kirke's isle is located, the 
"blast of the North wind" will drive the voyager thence 
toward the realms of the dead. In like manner it can 
now be understood how the stolen bride of Subterranean 



OLYMPOS 




TARTARUS 

THE WORLD OF HOMER 
For a convenient account of this reestablished world-view of the 
ancients, for the use of schools, see The True Key to Ancient Cosmology 
and Mythical Geography (third edition, illustrated, Boston, Messrs. Ginn, 
Heath & Co., 1882), from which the cut is taken. 



170 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Zeus, while descending behind swift steeds to the Under- 
world, can yet for a considerable time behold the starry 
heaven, the earth, the sunlight, and the fishy sea. 1 
Though the god has power to penetrate the solid sphere, 2 
it is down no yawning chasm that his chariot disappears. 
As far as we can trace him and his victim, they are 
still at the surface, simply moving from the upper to 
the lower hemisphere. 3 In perfect accordance with the 
requirement formulated by Volcker, Odysseus and his 
companions descend (xi, 57, 476), while the ghosts 
ascend (xi, 38), to reach the meeting-place on the lower 
edge of the Ocean-stream. Beautifully exact and strik- 
ingly natural is now the poet's declaration that Tartaros 
is "as far below Hades as earth from heaven" — a declara- 
tion as fatal to many of the fifteen or more traditional 
explanations of Homer's Hades as it is to Flach's elab- 
orate and ingenious diagram of the Hades of Hesiod. 4 
With this inverted hemisphere for the kingdom of the 
dead, Voss need not longer trouble himself about the 
mention of "clouds" therein. 5 In fine, with the correct 
Homeric conception of the earth and of Hades, the 



1 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 30-35. Foerster places the origin of this 
hymn early in the seventh century before Christ : Der Raub und Rilckkehr 
der Persephone, Stuttgart, 1874, pp. 33-39. See Sterrett, Qua in Re 
Hymni Homerici quinque Majores inter se differant Antiquitate vel Ho- 
meritate, Boston, 1881. 

2 Lines 16-18. Precisely so in the Indian epic, the Ramayana : one 
and the same point in Hades is reached, whether we accompany Ansu- 
man digging through the heart of the earth, or follow the goddess Gangji 
along the surface of the earth and across the Ocean-bed. Book i, canto xl. 
Comp. Odyssey, xi, 57, 58. 

3 The much-debated Nysian field whence the goddess was stolen was 
in the land of the gods at the North Pole. Menzel, Die vorchristliche 
Unsterblichkeitslehre, Bd. i, 64-67; ii, 25, 87, 93, 100, 122, 148, 345. 

4 Das System der Hesiodischen Kosmogonie, Leipsic, 1874. 

5 Odyssey, xi, 591. Volcker, while locating this Hades above grouna 
far to the West, is also embarrassed with these clouds, since his Homeric 
heaven does not extend over the trans-oceanic region, or even over the 
Ocean (p. 151). 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 171 

manifold alleged contradictions of the poet instantane- 
ously vanish. Better than that, the dual images of 
Hades, which have so long perplexed and blurred the 
vision of Homeric interpreters, suddenly resolve them- 
selves into one perfectly focused stereoscopic picture of 
startling vividness and beauty. 

One ground of misgiving and doubt may possibly 
still occur to cautious minds. "Is it credible/' it may 
be asked, "that the early Homeric Greek, unschooled in 
the exercise of the scientific imagination, could picture 
to himself that pendant under-surface of the earth as 
habitable even by ghosts? Could he so long before 
'Newton's day' have gained such knowledge of gravita- 
tion as to see how infernal rivers and infernal palaces 
could cling to an under-hemisphere? That Aristotle and 
the Greek philosophers of his age were able, we know 
from their writings 1 ; but is it credible that the Greek 
of the Homeric age was equal to such a task? This 
proposed conception of Hades requires that we should 
think of a world where everything is upside down, 
exactly contrary and antipodal to our own. Can we 
believe that 'prehistoric men' could achieve such a 
prodigy of abstract thought?" 

A pertinent and perhaps sufficient answer to these 
questions might be given by pointing to a most curious 
and instructive funeral-custom among the modern 
Karens of Burmah. This tribe is certainly not more 
highly gifted or more highly civilized than were the 
Greeks of the heroic age, yet they have precisely this 
Homeric conception of an antipodal Hades. A most 
competent authority gives us the following account: 

> See Dr. H.W. Schafer, Entwickelung der Ansichten des Alterthum* Obcr 
die Gestalt und Grosse der Erde, Leipsic, 1868, quarto. 



172 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

"When the day of burial arrives, and the body is car- 
ried to the grave, four bamboo splints are taken, and 
one is thrown toward the West, saying, That is the 
East'; another is thrown to the East, saying, That is 
the West'; a third is thrown upward toward the top 
of the tree, saying, That is the foot of the tree'; and 
a fourth is thrown downward, saying, That is the top 
of the tree/ The sources of the stream are pointed to, 
saying, That is the mouth of the stream'; and the 
mouth of the stream is pointed to, saying, That is the 
head of the stream/ This is done because in Hades 
everything is upside down in relation to the things of this 
world." 1 

Striking, however, as would be this answer to the 
questioner, a better can be given. The better one 
points out to him the foolishness of the assumption that 
either the Greeks or the Karens originated for them- 
selves their conceptions of Hades. Both simply in- 
herited from their fathers the old pre-Hellenic Asiatic 
idea of an antipodal Underworld. Ages ago the notion 
which underlies the Karen's rites was so prominent in 
the mind of the East Aryans that the sudden and 
inevitable reversal of the points of the compass, con- 
sequent upon entering the Underworld, became a poetic 
circumlocution to express the idea of dying; thus, 
"Before thou art carried away dead to the Ender by 
the royal command of Yama, . . . before the four quarters 
of tJw sky whirl round, . . . practice the most perfect 



1 Mason in Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, xxxv, pt. ii, p. 28. 
Spencer, Descriptive Sociology, No. 5, p. 23. At least one tribe of our 
American Indians at the time of their discovery had a myth of creation 
in which the earth was conceived of as a ball. H. H. Bancroft, Native 
Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii, p. 536. That the same idea underlay 
the Hades-conception of the New Zealanders is plain from various 
indications. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 173 

contemplation." 1 Ages ago the notion which underlies 
the southward voyage of Odysseus led prehistoric 
Akkadians, in naming the cardinal points of the com- 
pass, to designate the South as "the funereal point"; 
and in locating the kingdom of the dead, to place it 
opposite the stars of the south-polar sky. 2 Through all 
the lifetime of Babylonia and Assyria, as through all 
the lifetime of ancient India, the mount of the gods 
was at the summit of the earth at the North Pole; its 
counterpart — the mount of the rulers of the dead — 
exactly opposite, beneath the earth, and at the South 
Pole. 3 Hence life and light proceeded from the North, 
darkness and death from the South. 4 In like manner 



1 Mahabharata, xii, 12,080. Muir, Metrical Translations from Sanskrit 
Writers, London, 1879, p. 220. "To the gods this sphere of asterisms 
revolves toward the right; to the enemies of the gods, toward the left." 
— Surya SiddhSnta, xii, ch. 55. Comp. Aristotle, De Colo, lib. ii, c. 2. 

3 Dupuis, Origine de Toils les Cults, torn, i, 624. Lenormant, Chald&an 
Magic (English edition), pp. 16S, 169. On the significance of the South 
in Hindu belief, see Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i, pp. 174, 176, 182, 187, 
vol. ii, pp. 390-392; Monier Williams, Sanskrit Dictionary, article 
"Yama"; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. v, pp. 284-327; and Indian literature 
passim. 

8 Of the latter mount, Lenormant correctly says that, in ancient 
Chaldaean thought, it is "situte dans les parties basses de la terre," but 
at times he incorrectly locates it in the West. In like manner the 
mountain of the gods — "le point culminant de la convexity de la surface 
de la terre ,> — he places not in the North (Isa. xiv, 14), but often in the 
East or Northeast. Origines de VHistoire, Paris, 1882, torn, ii, 1, p. 134. 
See also Tiele, Histoire ComparSe des Anciennes Religions, Paris, 1882, 
p. 177, where he speaks of the entrance to Hades as at the Southwest 
This is certainly a mistake, for the Akkadian expression mer kurra, "the 
cardinal point of the mountain," must, at least originally, have sig- 
nified the North. And as to Lenormant's location of the antipodal 
mountain of Hades in the West or Southwest, our latest German writer 
upon the subject, Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch, an eminent Assyriologist , 
affirms that in the cuneiform literature thus far known he has discovered 
no trace of such a location. Wo lag das Parodies? Leipsic, 1881, p. 121 . 

4 "Nach der pythagoraischen, orphischen und neuplatonischen Lehre 
brachte der Nordwind Leben der Siidwind Tod, wohnten hinter dem 
Nordwind die Seligen und die Gotter als Schopfer und Erhalter der 
Welt, hinter dem Siidwind aber die Verdammten und alle bosen ^er- 



174 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

the Egyptians had their heaven-touching mountain in 
the farthest North, and an antipodal counterpart in 
Amenti, or the abode of the dead. 1 As in ancient 
India's, so in ancient Egypt's, thought, this world of 
the dead was exactly the reverse or counterpart of the 
world of the living. 2 "The tall hill of Hades," like 
Ku-meru, is therefore a "pendent" one 3 — the southern 
or under terminus of the egg of the earth. 4 The asser- 

storenden Urmachte." W. Menzel, Die vorchrisMche Unsterblichketis- 
lehre, vol. ii, p. 101 ; also pp. 36, 168, 345, and passim. Comp. A. Maury, 
Histoire des Religions de la Grece Antique, Paris, 1869, torn, iii, 354. 

1 For the first, see Brugsch, Geographische Inschriften altagyptischer 
Denkmaler, Leipsic, 1858, Bd. ii, p. 57; for the second, The Book of the 
Dead, passim. 

2 See Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion (English edition, 1882), 
p. 68, "the reversed world"; and the still more forcible expression in his 
Histoire Compare (Paris, 1882), p. 47, ,( le monde oppose" au monde 
actuel." Comp. Book of the Dead (Birch's version), where it is styled 
"the inverted precinct"; and Thompson's Egyptian Doctrine of the Future 
State, wherein Hades is described as "the inverted hemisphere of dark- 
ness," and where it is said to be "evident that the leading features of 
the Greek Hades were borrowed from Egypt." Bibliotheca Sacra, 1868, 
pp. 84, 86. Still more recently Reginald S. Poole has remarked, "Now 
that we recognize the Vedic source of a part of the Greek pantheon, and 
its generally Aryan character, we may fairly look elsewhere for that 
which is not Vedic. If embalming were derived from Egypt, why not 
the ideas which the Greek saw surrounding the custom — the pictures of 
the Underworld, with its judgment, its felicity, and its misery? The 
stories which Homer makes Odysseus tell, when he would disguise his 
identity, show the familiarity with Egypt of the Greeks of the poet's 
time." — The Contemporary Review, London, 1881, July, p. 61. It would 
be better to say that Homer's Hades, while agreeing with the Egyptian 
and Babylonian and Vedic, was not necessarily "borrowed" from either 
of these peoples, but more likely agreed with the Egyptian, Babylonian, 
and Vedic, simply because in each case there was a common inheritance 
— a survival of still more ancient ideas of prehistoric ancestors. 

3 Records of the Past, vol. x, p. 88. 

* Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 67 : "The heaven (at night) 
rests upon the earth, like a goose brooding over her egg." Chabas, 
Lieblein, and Lefebure have each maintained that the ancient Egyptians 
were acquainted with the spherical figure of the earth j^while Maspero, 
despite his language in Les Contes Populaires de VEgypte Ancienne 
(Paris, 1882, pp. lxi-lxiii), in a private letter of still more recent date 
admits the possibility that the Egyptians held to such a view as long 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 175 

tion sometimes made, that the Egyptian Amenti was 
just over the hill to the west of Abydos, 1 is only worthy 
of such cosmologists as Popsey Middleton, or the still 
more illustrious author of the Zetetic Astronomy. 

About a thousand years before Abraham went down 
into Egypt — at least, that is the date assigned by Egyp- 
tologists — a scribe engrossed upon a papyrus a fair copy 
of a tale of shipwreck. It is now one of the treasures 
of Saint Petersburg. At the Congress of Orientalists, 
held in Berlin in the year 1881, its existence was first 
made known to the modern world through the trans- 
lation then submitted by M. Golenischeff. The tale 
proves to be a kind of anticipation of the voyage of 
Odysseus to the realm of Aides. As in the Odyssey, it 
is the ship-commander himself who narrates his ad- 
ventures. There is no imaginative and poetic vagueness 
about the details. The ship was one hundred and fifty 
cubits long, forty broad. The crew consisted of one 
hundred and fifty men. Upon the Ocean he is wrecked, 
his crew lost; he himself, however, is driven upon an 
island in the neighborhood of the nether world of the 
dead. Indeed, the place itself was called "The Isle of 
the Double"; and it was, as Maspero believes, peopled 



ago as eighteen centuries before the Christian era. In this connection it 
may be useful to state that Professor Tiele informs the present writer 
that he has abandoned his conjecture touching Cher-nuter, expressed in 
his Vergdijkende Geschiedenis van de Egyptische en Mesopotamische 
Godesdiensten, Amsterdam, 1872, p. 94; French edition, 1882, p. 51; 
English edition, 1882, p. 72. 

1 As, for example, by Marius Fontane, Histoire Universdle, Les Egyptes, 
Paris, 1882, p. 154. The following is particularly timely: "While at 
Abydos I explored the mountain cliffs to the westward in the hope of 
finding early tombs in them. In this, however, I was disappointed, as 
I came across only a few tombs of the Roman period." — Professor A. 
H. Sayce in letter from Egypt in The Academy, London, Feb. 2, 1884, 
p. 84. 



176 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

by Shades invisible to the voyager only because he was 
as yet in the body. The king of the island was a huge 
serpent, thirty cubits long, and possessed of a wonderful 
beard. 1 

In what direction lay this mysterious land? 

Not in the West, where ail our Egyptologists persist 
in locating Amenti, but in the South. Directly up the 
Nihj and out into the Ocean at its head-waters, lay the 
voyagers track. As in the case of Odysseus, so many 
centuries later, it was the blast of the North wind which 
bore him thither. 2 

In conclusion, if both the ancient Egyptians 3 and 
Chaldseans 4 believed that like as the stars of the northern 
hemisphere are set over the realm of the living, so the 
stars of the southern hemisphere are set over the realm of 



l Les Contes PopuZaires de VEgypte Ancienne, pp. 145-147. On the 
conflicting views of Egyptologists as to the interpretation of terms 
designating the points of the compass, see Zeitschrift fur agyptische 
Sprache, 1865, 1877, etc. 

2 The universality of the ancient belief that disembodied souls must 
cross a body of water to reach their proper abode has attracted the 
attention of Mannhardt, and led him to remark, "Da auch die keltische, 
hellenische, iranische und indische Religion diese Vorstellung kennt, so 
ist es von vorn herein wahrscheinlich, dass dieselbe uber die Zeit der 
Trennung hinausgeht." — Germanische Mythen, Berlin, 1858, p. 364. 
This is a far more reasonable explanation than the fanciful attempt of 
Keary in the work already cited, and in his paper before the Royal 
Society of Literature entitled "Earthly Paradise of European Myths." 

J Creuzer-Guigniaut, Religions de V AntiquiU, torn, ii, p. 836. Com- 
pare the language of the recently discovered epitaph of Queen Isis 
em Kheb, mother-in-law of Shishak, King of Assyria {circa 1000 B.C.) : 
"She is seated all beautiful in her place enthroned, among the gods 
of the South she is crowned with flowers." — The Funeral Tent of an 
Egyptian Queen, by Villiers Stuart, London, 1882, p. 34. Notwith- 
standing this, Mr. Stuart, a few pages later — so powerful is the in- 
fluence of tradition — alludes to Amenti as located in the West (p. 49, 
also p. 27). But the inscription continues: "She is seated in her beauty 
in the arms of Khonsou her father, fulfilling his desires. He is in Amenti, 
the place of departed spirits." Comp. p. 33. 

4 Diodorus Siculus, ii, 31, 4. Lenormant, The Beginnings of History, 
New York, 1882, pp. 568, 569. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD 177 

the dead j if in ancient Hindu thought "the gods in heaven 
are beheld by the inhabitants of hell as they move with 
their heads inverted," 1 if in Roman thought — 

"Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces 
Consurgit premitur Libyae devexus in austros: 
Hie vertex nobis semper sublimis, at ilium 
Sub pedibus Styx aira videt, Manesque profundi" f 

if in Greek cosmology the tall Pillar of Atlas is, as 
Euripides makes it, simply the upright axis of earth and 
heaven 3 — then the earth of the ancients is incontestably 
a sphere, and Hades its under-surface. The "flat disk" 
notion is itself a myth, and a myth without foundation. 
In ancient thought, in a sense unrecognized even by 
the writer of the words, was it true — 

"The world of Life, 
The world of Death, are but opposing sides 
Of one great Orb." 4 



1 Garrett, Classical Dictionary of India, article "Naraka." See also 
Obry, Le Berccau de VEspkce humaine, p. 184u. 

2 Vergil, Georgics, i, 240, ss. 

8 Peirithous, 597, 3-5, ed. Nauck. Comp. Aristotle, De Anim. 
Motione, c. 3. Samuel Beal, Four Lectures on Buddhist Literature in 
China, London, 1882, p. 147. Luken on Atlas in Traditionen des Men- 
schengeschlechtes, Minister, 2d ed., 1869. Also, The True Key to Ancient 
Cosmology, pp. 13-21. 

* Morris, The Epic of Hades, 14th ed., London, 1882, p. 230. 



SECTION III— HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 

AN ELUCIDATION OF THE VOYAGES OF ODYSSEUS 

In the pursuit of this inquiry we are traveling over ground more 
beaten perhaps than that of any other literary controversy. — Herman 
Merivale. 

Voss und Ukert weisen die Versuche der Alten ab> dem Dichter die 
Kenntniss der Kugelgestalt der Erde geben zu wollen. . . . Von alien 
Zeiten her hat man probiret, die Irrfahrten des Odysseus zu erlautern 
und ist auf die allerverschiedensten Wege gekommen. . . . An planloses 
Umherirren wo eben ein Wunderland sich darbot, an Anbringen und 
Auskramen geographischer Kenntnisse von Seiten des Dichters, und 
Aehnliehes, ist nieht zu denken. — K. H. W. V dicker. 

As the heroes of the Iliad were as familiar to the Greek navigators 
as the saints of the Church calendar were to the Spanish and Portuguese 
discoverers of the New World, and as they were treated by them with 
the same sort of respect and veneration, there can be little doubt that 
they left the same sort of memorials of them [i.e., by naming localities 
and waters for them] wherever they made discoveries or piratical set- 
tlements; which memorials being afterward found among barbarous 
nations by succeeding navigators, when the discoverers were forgotten 
and the settlers vanished, they concluded that those heroes had actually 
been there. And as the works of the Greek poets, by the general diffu- 
sion of the Greek language after the Macedonian conquest, became 
universally known and admired, those nations themselves eagerly 
cooperated in the deception by ingrafting the Greek fables upon their 
own, and greedily catching at any links of affinity which might connect 
them with a people from whom all that was excellent in art, literature, 
and society seemed to be derived. — R. P. Knight. 1 

Three years ago, in these pages, 2 a new interpretation 
of the cosmological ideas of Homer, and of the ancients 
generally, was presented, and, as far as space permitted, 
illustrated. Two years ago, in the paper entitled 
"Homer's Abode of the Dead," a further vindication of 
the new view was given in a form which seems to have 
carried conviction to all scholars thus far heard from in 



1 The Classical Journal, London, 1823, p. 69. 

2 The Boston University Year Book. 

178 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 179 

this country and in Europe. In the present paper it 
is proposed to show what light and beauty the new and 
true conception of Homer's Earth immediately brings 
into the chaos of surmises and guess-work which en- 
velopes and for centuries has enveloped the problem of 
the Odyssean voyagings. 

To enumerate all the conflicting opinions of the 
Homeric interpreters touching the direction of these 
voyages, and the location of the different lands visited, 
would require a special treatise. Even the ancient 
Greek writers were themselves far from agreed in respect 
to these questions, while modern scholars have carried 
their ingenious conjectures to what would seem to be 
the farthest bound of possibility. A fair idea of the 
indescribable confusion which still reigns in this field 
of Homeric teaching may be formed from the account 
given in Ukert's Geographie der Griechen und Romer, 
part first, subdivision second, pages 310-319, to which 
the interested reader is referred. 1 

No one can proceed far in these discussions without 
discovering that everything turns upon two points; to 
wit, the location of Aiaie and the location of Ogygia. 
Could these once be fixed, the Homeric geographers and 
cartographers would have little trouble with the remain- 
ing details. 

Where, then, is Aiaie? Mr. Gladstone, in the map 
prefixed to his Juventus Mundi, 2 places it in the farthest 
known, if not indeed in the unknown, East. Mr. 

1 In view of these apparently insurmountable difficulties, many have 
been willing to lend an ear to those all-explaining champions of the 
Sun-myth, who with Dr. George Karl Cornelius Gerland assure us: 
"Die ganze Fable des heimkehrenden Odysseus beruht auf eine Per- 
sonification der Sonne." — Altgriechische Marchen in der Odyssee, Magde- 
burg, 1869, p. 50. Comp. Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, and 
Comparative Mythology and Folklore. 

2 London and Boston, 1868, p. 490. 



180 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Bunbury, 1 on the contrary, in the somewhat later sketch- 
chart inserted in his History of Ancient Geography, 
locates it in the farthest West. Each represents the 
opinion of a large number of interpreters, however 
widely these latter may dissent among themselves with 
respect to other questions. The partisans of the eastern 
location are accustomed to appeal to the explicit declara- 
tion of the poet that at Aiaie "are the abodes and dance- 
grounds of Aurora, there the risings of the Sun" (Odyssey, 
xii, 3, 4) : the other company declare that every indication 
given as to the direction of the voyagers on their way 
thither necessitates the supposition that the general 
course was west, or northwest or southwest from Greece. 2 
Both classes are right; but instead of searching out in 
what way they can both be right, a great number of 
interpreters have taken the easier method of accusing 
the poet of arbitrariness, or of self-contradiction. Thus 
one of them says, "We cannot help fancying that our 
poet, in the plenitude of his authority, seized upon the 
Argonautic cycle, and transferred Aiet6s and the Aiaian 
isle to the West from their proper place in the East; 
and he may have retained the description of that isle, 
which accords perfectly with its eastern position, but 



IE. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks 
and Romans, London, 1879. 

2 To break the force of the argument from Odyssey xii, 3, 4, Mr. Meri- 
vale, like some of his predecessors, says, "The land of sunrise is the 
land over which the sun first appears to him who is making his back- 
ward journey from the West, the land of sunset and of death, across 
the Ocean-stream to the inhabited world, as the extreme west of Corn- 
wall is the land of sunrise to the Scilly Islanders." Unfortunately 
for this ingenious explanation, its author, in interpreting the account 
of the land of the Lsestrygonians, Odyssey, x, 81, seq., is driven by his 
fiat-earth assumption to a doctrine of sunrise, according to which the 
Scilly Islands become the sunrise land to the inhabitants of West Corn- 
wall. "Three Theories of the Wanderings of Ulysses," in The Fort- 
nightly, London, 1871, pp. 758, 759. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 181 

which requires a sleight of ingenuity like that just 
noticed, to make it suit the West." 1 

Mr. Bunbury observes, "Kirke was the daughter of 
the Sun; and hence her island would naturally be asso- 
ciated, in the mind of the poet, with bright and sunny 
images, which he might well introduce in a passing notice 
without considering how far they were geographically 
appropriate." 2 

Heimreich formulates this charge of absent-minded- 
ness or forge tfulness still more definitely as follows: 
"All the hanging-back and hand-wringing of the inter- 
preters avail nothing. The abodes and dancing-places of 
the early-born Aurora, and the risings of the Sun, are 
in the East; and to transport them to an island in the 
far West is worse than absurd. I can explain it only 
as a thoughtlessness on the part of the poet, who had 
in memory similar verses taken from the poem of the 
Argonauts, of which he made use; and for the moment 
he forgot that, in consequence of his fiction that Odys- 
seus also was come to Aiaie, the adoption into his poem 
of this perhaps Jormelhaften Wendung had become 
impracticable." 3 

One of our latest mythographers first places the 
elusive islet in the East, as most in accord with Homeric 
traditions; but at length triumphantly explains all 
difficulties by identifying it with "the Moon," which, 
naturally enough, "is now in the East, and now in the 
West."* 

How would the wise old poet smile at such semi- 

1 Keightley, Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, 4th ed., London, 
1S77, p. 238. 

* History of Ancient Geography, vol. i, p. 79. 

•Heimreich, Die Telemachie und der jiingere Nostos, Flensburg, 1871, 
p. 20. 

* Robert Brown, Jun., The Myth of KirU, London, 1883, pp. 24, 27. 



182 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

accusatory, semi-apologetic criticism! On the actual 
earth, the East is reached by sailing West; and if inter- 
preters had only been willing to concede to the ancient 
sages a little of their own abounding knowledge of the 
natural world, they would have spared themselves many 
a mortifying mistake. They should have read, in 
Lanier's Psalm of the West, of that 

"Big, perilous theorem, hard for king and priest, — 
Pursue the West but long enough, 'tis East." 1 

So plain is Homer's language, that some readers still 
addicted to the traditional view have here and there 
seen its force, and only by a hair's breadth missed the 
true Homeric geography. Thus Mr. Gladstone, in his 
Juventus Mundi, before his abandonment of the flat- 
earth theory, observed, "He seems to connect the 
extreme East with the farthest West — sunset with 
sun-rise — as if he thought the earth's surface were 
wrapped (so to speak) round a cylinder." 2 

Out "True Key to Ancient Cosmology," with its 
spherical Homeric Earth, instantly solves these age-long 
contradictions. To recent writers, had they been atten- 
tive, Volcker's disposition of the problem of Aiaie ought 
to have suggested the full-orbed truth. He found it 
necessary to assume the existence of two Aiaies — one 
located in the far East and one in the far West. 3 Now, 



1 Poems of Sidney Lanier, New York, 1884, p. 123. 

2 P. 531. Comp. p. 325: "The fact of the Sun's sporting with the 
oxen night and morning goes far to show that Homer did nofr think 
of the Earth as a plane, but round, perhaps as upon a cylinder, and 
believed that the West and East were in contact." 

' To relieve the incredibleness of his theory, he philosophically remarks, 
"The poetic mind of the Greeks elaborated the conception of the 
Universe harmoniously, so that to the Sun-land in the East a similar 
one had to correspond in the West." ( !) — Horn. Geog., § 66. Comp. 
also his Myth. Geog. der Griechen und Romer, Leipsic, 1832, p. 79. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 183 

just as in the paper on "Homer's Abode of the Dead" 
we found that the true Homeric conception of the figure 
of the earth causes Volcker's two Hadean kingdoms to 
melt or merge at once into one, so here the same true 
conception of Homer's Earth merges the two world- 
widely separated Aiaies into one located on the opposite 
side of the northern hemisphere, equidistant from the poet 
eastward and westward. It is there that to the poet the 
westering sun begins to easier. 1 Hence, though far to 
the West, it is at the same time far to the East — the 
place of which he says, "There are the abodes and 
dance-grounds of Aurora, there the risings of the Sun." 2 

How beautifully those mutually contradicting maps 
themselves confirm the truth when once the truth is 
found! Gladstone's, and others, place the mythic isle 
in the farthest East; Bunbury's, and others, in the 
farthest West; Volcker's, and others, fix it in both the 
farthest East and farthest West. All are thus as con- 
tradictory as is well possible, yet all are unwittingly 
witnesses to the exact truth. The moment we take them 
from the "flat disk" of ignorant assumption, and wrap 
them around the sphere of true Homeric science, that 
moment all become congruent and correct. All now 
yield a common result, and confirm in the most striking 
manner the location above defined. 

This true solution of the position of Aiaie furthermore 
explains all the difficulties which commentators have 
found in the strange expression of Odysseus, that at 

ir The ancient Germans had the same habit of considering the sun- 
setting as extending until twelve o'clock midnight. See the curious 
expressions in Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Theil ii, pp. 701, 705: "Dess- 
halb fingen die Alten den Tag nicht vom Aufgang der Sonne, sondern 
schon von Mitternacht an, wie auch wir heute noch thun." — Wolfgang 
Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, Leipsic, 1870, Theil i, 
p. 77. 

* Odyssey, xii, 3, 4. 



184 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

that point he knew not where was East, or where was 
West, where the sun rose, or where it went behind the 
Earth (Odyssey, x, 190-192). Of this, and the passage 
xii, 1-4, Mr. Bunbury says "it seems impossible to 
reconcile the two." Mr. Gladstone goes still farther, and 
suggests that Homer himself is embarrassingly involved 
in his own conceptions, and, under the fogginess of this 
blind statement, is seeking to escape. 1 In the mouth of 
Mr. Gladstone, the most reverent of Homeric elucidators, 
this language is peculiarly surprising. But let one once 
conceive of Aiaie as we have placed it, and how perfectly 
natural the enigmatical expression! To the poet, Odys- 
seus and his comrades are homeoscian antipodes; hence 
the setting sun is at the same moment the rising sun, 
West is one with East, sunset is lost in sunrise. The 
Venerable paradox is only a new and perfect index to 
the exact location which scholars have so long and so 
vainly sought. 

Such being the position of Aiaie, the direction of 
Odysseus on his voyage to Hades and back is settled 
beyond a doubt. 

In Gladstone's map the course of this voyage is laid 
down as first north, then east, then a long way south, 
rounding in at last a little to the west, and having the 
landing on the nearer shore of the Ocean-stream. 2 In 

iU I have already shown that this island (Aiaie) is absolutely fixed, 
according to the mind of Homer, in the East, as Aiolie is in the West. 
It cannot be in the remote North, because no fire is used. It is not 
very likely to lie to the south of East, because of the neighborhood 
of the Kimmerian fog. This is a difficulty for Homer, since his Dawn 
ought to be somewhat to the south of East. He tries (it may seem) 
to escape, like some of his Trojan heroes, in a fog; for he declares that, 
on arriving here, Odysseus could make out nothing about his position 
relatively to the Dark and the Dawn, the Sunset and the Sunrise. This 
difficulty cannot wholly be removed." — Juventus Mundi, p. 490. 

2 Later, in his Primer of Homer, p. 60, Mr. Gladstone transfers the 
entrance to Hades to the outer shore, "the farther bank of the Ocean- 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 185 

Bunbury's map, on the contrary, the course is due west, 
and the landing on the farther shore of the Ocean. Two 
representations could hardly contradict each other more 
completely : neither is at all correct. 

What are the requirements of the poem? First, it 
must be a voyage southward; for Kirke states that it 
is to be by "the blast of Boreas" that they are to be 
borne forward. 1 Locating Hades and Aiaie as we have, 
this is precisely the wind we need to take the ship down 
to and across the Ocean-river. In the second place, if 
one follows Volcker's interpretation — to which, for our 
part, we attach but slight importance — after reaching 
the Ocean-river, the voyagers are represented as sailing 
upstream for some distance before landing, and after- 
ward returning downstream. 3 This part of the journey, 
then, on a spherically conceived Homeric Earth, would 
be along the lower shore of the Equatorial Ocean-stream, 
from the meridian of Aiaie, in the direction of the 
meridian of Ithaca, in a course opposite to the apparent 
motion of the sun. In the third place, the point reached 
by the party in the realm of the dead is described by 
the term u*o ^6<pta % If, now, this expression is intended 
to indicate a point of compass, as well as the gloominess 
of the place visited, it could not have been better chosen, 
since it describes the location precisely in accordance 
with all other indications, and fixes it as below the 
Ocean-stream, and in what was to the poet the Western 
Hemisphere, making the spot thus precisely "under the 



stream." He thinks, however, that, in this part of his work, the poet 
was in a "confused" and "bewildered state of mind," and that his 
"latitudes were thrown into something like purposed confusion" (p. 61). 

1 Odyssey, x, 507. 

2 Odyssey, book xi, 638; xii, 1, 2. Comp. Volcker, Homerische Geo- 
graphie, sects. 61, 74. The current was conceived of as in the direction 
of the motion of the hands of a watch. 



186 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

dark (West)," to use the very terms which various 
translators have employed in rendering the passage. 1 

So much for Aiaie. But our hemispherical conception 
of Homer's Abode of Living Men equally clears up the 
long-standing mystery as to the location of Kalypso's 
isle, Ogygia. 

On this subject, as a recent author says, "vohimes 
have been written." Gladstone and others place the 
witching isle far to the north of Greece; Bunbury and 
others, far to the west; Ukert and others, far to the 
southwest; Volcker and others, in the highest northwest; 
Merivale and others, like Kallimachos of old, leave it in 
the center of the Mediterranean Sea, and identify it 
with "Malta or its neighbor Gozo"; and so on to the 
end of the list. 

Mr. Gladstone apologetically remarks, "The poet's 
descriptions are very vague, especially as to the island 
of Kalypso. The fact seems to be that he was misled, 
not only by falsehood, but also by truth. When in- 
formants, speaking of the same region, described it as 
one of all but perpetual day, and also as one of night 

1 See "Homer's Abode of the Dead" (latest edition in Paradise Found, 
pp. 467-487). A few days ago (Feb. 11, 1885) the writer came, for 
the first time, upon a reference to the Odyssean Hades, which, though 
barely incidental, and apparently forming no part of a comprehensive 
interpretation of Homeric cosmology, curiously conforms to the doctrine 
set forth in The True Key. Speaking of the religious ideas of the Greeks, 
the writer, Mr. R. P. Knight, remarks: "The fate of the terrestrial 
soul, the regions to which it retired at the dissolution of the body, and 
the degree of sensibility which it continued to enjoy, are subjects of 
much obscurity. In the Odyssey it is allowed a mere, miserable exist- 
ence in the darkness of the polar regions, without any reward for 
virtue or punishment for vice." — The Classical Journal, London, 1822, 
vol. xx vi, p. 41. Compare Dante's wonderfully graphic picture of 
Odysseus's final and unreturning Descensus ad inferos, in the "Inferno," 
canto xxvi, and the significance of the lines: 

"Tutte la stelle gia dello altro polo 
Vedea la notte, e il nostro tanto basso 
Che non surgea di for del marin suolo." 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 187 

all but perpetual, although both of these statements 
were true, he had not the key to their truth, and thus 
could only seek refuge in vagueness from contradiction." 1 

Nearly two thousand years ago, the best geographers 
knew as little as now what to make of Homer's language. 
Here is Pliny's attempt to wrestle with it: 'The island 
of Ogygia, so called by Homer, is the habitable land in 
that whole hemisphere which the ancients believed to be 
surrounded on all sides by the Ocean; for which reason 
it is called Navel Island, that is, the middle of the Ocean. 
There he places Kalypso, the daughter of Atlas, who 
knows the foundations of the Ocean, and supports upon 
immense pillars the weight of Heaven and Earth. This 
is Nature herself, such as she appears in that hemisphere, 
and Homer gives her the name of a woman then very 
well known, because there are many things in nature 
which she keeps concealed; the word xaXOnrsiv signifying 
to conceal." 2 

Perhaps the latest and most convenient method of 
disposing of the whole question is that adopted by 
Henry Hayman, according to whom the poet did not 
intend that we should have any idea whatever as to the 



1 Juventus Mundi, p. 480. 

2 Compare the following: "It is hardly necessary to observe that the 
Homeric geography in regard to all these distant lands must be con- 
sidered as altogether fabulous. We are wholly at a loss to account 
for the localities assigned by the Greeks in later days to the scenes of 
the Odyssey: it is certain that nothing can less accord with the data 
(such as they are) supplied by Homer than the identifications they 
adopted." — Edward H. Bunbury, in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and 
Roman Geography, article "Ogygia." Many years ago, after a per- 
sonal inspection of Ithaca and Corcyra, Leucadia and Strongyle, Scylla 
and Charybdis, Taphros and the Hellespont, mythical Scherie and 
the land of the Lotophagoi, the present writer reached the conclusion 
that the shores and islands of the Mediterranean afford no key to these 
immortal Homeric voyages, and that the secret of many of the tra- 
ditional identifications reported by scholiasts and geographers is sub- 
stantially the one suggested in motto third prefixed to the present paper 



188 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

real location, and hence deliberately and purposely 
"locked up his mystery" in a manner intended to be 
effectual. The passage in which he presents this view 
is curious enough to quote: "Homer does not say the 
'wind and water* as elsewhere, but the 'gods/ brought 
him (x£Xa<rav) thither; i.e., the whole course is regarded 
as due to their interposition. By this contrivance the 
poet seems to intimate that no ordinary reckoning of 
distance or rate is applicable. He thus breaks away 
from the group of eastern localities which lie in connec- 
tion with Aiaie — viz., the Sirens, Thrinakie, and Scylla — 
and lands us in a new region. The name, if meaning, 
as Mr. Paley on iEschylos (Eumen., 989) thinks, a dark 
gulf or chasm, suits well the idea suggested by that of 
Kalypso, 'the Concealer ;' similarly Hesiod (Theogony, 
803) applies it to the water of Styx. . . . Thus, by the 
very names Ogygia and Kalypso, the poet may mean to 
hint that their whereabouts is not to be retraced, and 
that this part of the hero's course is not to be squared 
with previous notes of time or place. The same idea 
suits the 6/i<paXd$ OaMffffr}?, i.e., the center of the sea 
where it rose high, as land rises highest in some point 
far inland, and thus of unknown remoteness. So, from 
Ogygia reaching Scherie in twenty days (vi, 170, vii, 
268-297), he is from Scherie brought back into known 
regions by a supernatural machinery — the magic galleys 
(viii, 558-563) which knew not human laws, and there- 
fore baffle calculation. Thus the poet locks up his 
mystery; and all attempts to open it are idle in them- 
selves, and are a violation of his idea." 1 

That there is no need for such a hewing asunder of 
the Gordian knot, the briefest glance at the true Homeric 
earth suffices to show. Nobody can fail to find the 

1 Hayman's Odyssey, vol. i, Appendix D, p. xlvii. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 189 

6[±<pak6$ of a hemispherical shield; and nobody can have 
any greater difficulty in finding the 6fj.<paUs f that ter- 
restrial hemisphere which Homer makes his Abode of 
Living Men. It can be nothing else than the Pole. And 
as the sea was supposed to surround it (as it does), 
and as the known countries around the Mediterranean 
were conceived of as little more than large islands in a 
sea which covered the greater part of the northern hemi- 
sphere (see Strabo), it was the most natural thing in the 
world that the polar island should be called the fyyaXd? 
OaXdffffrjs^ "the navel of the sea." 1 As if to make it im- 
possible to misunderstand his language, the poet calls 
the earth-picturing shield of Achilles not flat, but euxuxXo?, 
" well-orbed"; and by placing the Ocean-stream around 
its rim makes it, as on the earth of ancient East- Aryan 
mythology, everywhere equidistant from its twaM? or 
Pole. In its application to the Pole of the heavens the 
same metaphorical term has often been employed among 
other peoples; 2 and if, as Dr. Hayman thinks, divine 



1 The term forcibly recalls the oft-recurring, not yet fully understood 
Avestan expression, apdm napdt, "the Navel of the Waters." With- 
out claiming an entire correspondence in its meaning, we may yet note 
with interest that, in the Middle Ages, the Parsees certainly associated 
this "Navel of the Waters" with their mythical north-polar world- 
mountain, and assigned to it somewhat of the divinity and sanctity 
of the latter; that Neriosengh, in translating the Yacna into the Sans- 
krit, understood and rendered it in the same way; and, finally, that 
such scholars as Spiegel and Burnouf have lent to the interpretation 
the authority of their great names, though the former, in his com- 
mentary, is inclined to change his opinion. See Bleeck's Avesta, pt. ii, 
pp. 30, 133, 137, 141 ; pt. iii, pp. 46, 91, 130, 145, 148, 149, 152, etc 
Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, Yasht v, p. 177. Hovelacque, 
U Avesta Zoroastre et le MazdHsme, Paris, 1880, pp. 252-254. 

2 Extremely interesting is the Vedic use of the terms "navel of the 
heavens," "navel of the world," and "navel of the earth." See Rig 
Veda, i, 105, 110, i, 164, i, 185, x, 90, 14, et passim. Even Fontane, 
who finds the Vedic cosmology "embryonaire," is impressed by the 
scientific attainments disclosed in one of these umbilical hymns. Inde 
V&dique, Paris, 1881, p. 200. The name of the celestial Pole with the 



190 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

agency seems to supersede natural in its vicinity, it is 
entirely in keeping with the idea that about and above 
the Arctic Pole is peculiarly the home of the gods. So 
the fact that Kalypso is the daughter of Atlas becomes 
at once significant, when it is remembered, that, in the 
oldest Greek mythology, the proper location of Atlas is 
not at the west, in Libya, but in the extreme north, at 
the Pole. 1 The four-fold fount, "flowing in four opposite 
directions," further identifies the place with the mythi- 
cal polar Gotterberg of the Iranians, Hindus, and other 
peoples. 2 The same must be said of the beauty of the 
isle, which was so adorned with groves, and "soft 
meadows of violets," that the poet closes his description 
by asserting, that, "on beholding it, even an Immortal 
would be seized with wonder and delight." 3 Finally, as 
we should know in advance, it is apparently Notos 
which bears the voyager thither, and Boreas which 
brings him thence to the Phseacians. All evidences, 
therefore, conspire to fix the location of the long-adrift 
isle at the Arctic Pole. The "much-contriving" Odys- 
seus crowns all his other achievements in the most 
fitting manner. Anticipating the belated Kanes and 
Franklins and Payers of our day, he snatches the su- 
preme prize of Polar exploration! 
In conclusion, then, the recovery of the true Homeric 

ancient Finns was taivahan napanan, "navel of the heavens." Castrdn, 
Finnische Mythologie, St. Petersburg, 1853, p. 32. Comp. Grimm, 
Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 766, 1225. See chapters on "The Eden Zenith," 
and "The Navel of the Earth," in Paradise Found : The Cradle of the 
Human Race at the North Pole, Boston, 1885. 

* K. H. W. Volcker, Mythische Geographic, Leipsic, 1832, p. 133. 

2 See P. F. Keerl, Die Schftpfungsgeschichte und Lehre vom Parodies, 
Basel, 1861, pp. 796-799. Julius Grill, Die Erzvater der Menschheit, 
Leipsic, 1875, vol. i, pp. 223-279. W. Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unster- 
blichkeitslehre, vol. ii, pp. 11, 12. See chapter on "The Quadrifurcate 
River," in Paradise Found. 

a Odyssey, v. 63-75. Comp. Paradise Found, pp. 235, 236. 



HOMER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING 191 

conception of the Abode of Living Men pours a flood of 
light over the entire Odyssey, showing what we stated 
more than three years ago, namely, that the wanderings 
of Odysseus are a representation, in highly poetical form, 
of an imaginary circumnavigation of the mythical Earth in 
its upper or northern hemisphere, including a trip to the 
under or southern hemisphere, and a visit to the North Pole. 



SECTION IV— THE GATES OF SUNRISE IN THE OLDEST 
MYTHOLOGIES 

In a noteworthy contribution to Volume III of the 
American Journal of Archaeology, Dr. William Hayes 
Ward, of New York, advances convincing considerations 
in favor of interpreting a certain representation often 
recurring in the ancient Babylonian cylinders, as re- 
ferring to the Gates of Sunrise and to the coming forth 
of Shamash, the Sun-god, from them. No competent 
student of the subject can well doubt that the explana- 
tion is at once strikingly original and correct. 

But where in ancient Babylonian thought were these 
Gates of Sunrise located? Not "above the Median moun- 
tains/ ' to the East of Babylonia, as Dr. Ward inad- 
vertently implies, and as any one unmindful of the 
peculiarities of ancient cosmology would inevitably 
suppose. Not on the eastern but under the northern 
horizon stood the twin mountains and the Sacred Gate. 

The Egyptians had a similar Gate of their Sun-god Ra. 
As Maspero says: "La Porte Sacree est representee dans 
les vignettes du Livre des Morts, tantot ouverte et 
laissant paraitre entre ses deux montants le disque 
solaire ou le dieu Toumou a forme humaine, tantot 
fermee et verrouillee." 1 And where was this Sacred 
Portal? Under the northern horizon of Egypt, reached 
by the sun six hours after his apparent setting, and left 
by him six hours before his apparent rising. 2 More 
precisely it was "au point ou Shou souleve le ciel" 
(p. 274); consequently, though below the horizon of 

1 Revue de VHistoire des Religions, Paris, 1887, p. 274n. 
*Ibid., p. 275. 

192 



THE GATES OF SUNRISE 193 

Egypt, it was at the true summit of the Earth, the 
Northern Pole. 1 

The twin mountains represented in the Shamash 
cylinders are doubtless the twin (masi) mountains re- 
ferred to in the second column of the ninth tablet of 
the Epic of Gisdhubar. 2 They appear to have been 
terminal peaks of "the mountain of the world/' which, 
like the Hara-berezaiti of the Iranians, was "the support 
and mother of all lesser mountains." Professor Sayce is 
quite right in making the Babylonian "mountain of 
sunrise" and "mountain of sunset" one and the same; 3 
nor need he have hesitated as he seems to have done to 
identify that one with the "Mountain of the World." 4 
In the bilingual hymn appended to Dr. Ward's article 
it is abundantly identified with "that great mountain," 
"the mountain of fate," "the place of destinies." 5 



1 See the six theses in Egyptian cosmology in Boston University Year 
Book, vol. x, p. 33, or in Paradise Found, p. 173. 

3 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 363n. If, as Brugsch has conjectured, 
the "Four Props of Heaven" in Egyptian mythology were terminal 
peaks of their polar Weltberg, answering to the four contreforts of 
Mount Meru in the four cardinal points, it is likely that the Babylonian 
Kharsag-kurkura also had four such peaks, and that the two repre- 
sented in the Shamash seals are those which in Puranic geography 
stand in the northeast and southeast corners of Ilavrita. In starting 
upon his eastward journey it would be between those two that the Sun- 
god would naturally issue forth from the "Sonnengarten am Nordpol." 

In this connection it should be noted that the Egyptian picture 
given by Brugsch and others, in which Nut is represented as supported 
at four extreme points by feet and hands, and at the "Navel" by Shu, 
is not, as usually understood, a picture of the sky above Egypt, but 
is a representation of the polar heaven of the gods. The hands and 
feet of the goddess are the "Four Props." Shu, at the "Navel of Heaven" 
(and "Navel of Earth"), is the prototype of Atlas and the Atlas pillar. 
The passage of the sun through her body represents, not the twelve 
hours of an equatorial night, but the briefer transit of the child of Nut 
through the heaven that overspans Ta-nuter. 

'Ibid., p. 361. * Paradise Found, pp. 123-137. 

•Ward, Paid., p. 56; Sayce, Poid., p. 515. On the expression "place 
of destinies" compare Lajard, Le Culte et les Mysteres de Mithra, Paris, 
1867, pp. 39, 133. 



194 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

But, though to a person in the latitude of Babylonia 
or Egypt the mountain of the sunrise was below the 
local horizon, it was not properly in the underworld. 
In its own latitude it was the dazzling summit of the 
spherical earth, the only stairway to the abode of the 
gods. Hence, speaking with reference to the true 
heaven — the heaven of the gods — the poet could, with 
perfect consistency, sing of the sunrising as in a heavenly 
region, in "the Navel of Heaven," and allude to the 
Sun-gate as a gate of the Sky. 1 Failing to recognize the 
like sphericity of the old Egyptian earth, whose moun- 
tain of sunrise exactly corresponded to the Babylonian, 
Maspero involves himself in difficulty, and finds the 
sun at midnight at the gate of the abode of Osiris, but 
this gate at one and the same time beneath the Northern 
horizon, and yet high in the north or northeastern 
sky. 2 

In perfect accord with the real ideas of ancient Egypt 
and Babylonia, Plato locates Apollo, the god of light, at 
the North Pole, and Hesiod in his Theogony places in 
the same vicinity his Gate of Day. Naville has shown 
that in Egyptian thought the geographical On was only 
an earthly copy of a heavenly one, the heavenly sanc- 
tuary of Ra. This, like the Palace of Mithra in Avestan 
thought, and the Shrine of Agni in Vedic thought, was 
at the top of the polar mountain of the gods, a mountain 
based upon the whole earth, but piercing the first of 
the heavenly spheres. There also was the Dionysian 
Nysa, and what Wolfgang Menzel long ago described as 



*West Asian Inscriptions, iv, 17. Translated by Sayce in Hibbert 
Lectures, p. 171. On the "Navel of Heaven," see Paradise Found, 
pp. 202-224. 

sMaspero, Ut supra, p. 275. Also his essay, "Egyptian Souls and 
their Worlds," in the New Princeton Reriew, July. 1888, pp. 23-36. 



THE GATES OF SUNRISE 195 

the "Sonnengarten am Nordpol." The present writer 
has little doubt that the remarkable Stone Tablet of 
Abu-habba will eventually be recognized as a representa- 
tion of Shamash, seated in state in his sanctuary, upon 
the summit of "the mountain of the world," precisely 
as Plato has represented Apollo; that the solitary timeru 
(column) will prove to be the Atlas-pillar, the Shu- 
support, of the world; that Siru, the over-arching serpent, 
will be recognized as the guardian constellation Draco; 
that the so-called "sun-wheel" 1 upon the altar will be 
found to be the Earth-navel with the sign of the Quadri- 
furcate Waters; and, finally, that the study of the 
inscription Ina put apsi, and the related expression pi-i 
nahri in the Epic, will at length teach the teachable that 
in this ancient language, as in more than one other, 
there are indications that originally in early poetic and 
mythologic expression the "mouth" of a river was in 
immediate connection with its "head" and was, in fact, 
but another name for the fountain from which it drew 
its nourishment. 2 

In the light of the foregoing the inference seems 
warranted that at the time when the far-off ancestors 
of the ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians first formed 
their sun-myths, they were living in the high North — 
in a latitude but just below the charmed line which 
bounds off the mysterious territory of the "Midnight 
Sun." In a land located in the neighborhood of 60° N. 
the diurnal movements of the sun would be exactly 



1 There is high authority for considering an entirely different figure 
— the lozenge — the oldest sun-symbol in Babylonian art. See the 
American Journal of Arch&ology, vol. iii, p. 385. 

3 See for representations of the tablet the Transactions of the Society 
of Biblical Archaeology, vol. viii, p. 164; Me"nant, Pierres Gravies, torn, 
i, p. 243; Ward, Notes in the American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 
iv, 341-343. 



196 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

adapted to produce the remarkable myth-imagery pre- 
served to us in the art and literature of ancient Chaldea 
and Egypt. In such unanticipated ways is every year 
augmenting and reinforcing the evidence of the Arctic 
origin of man. 



SECTION V— THE HOMELAND OF THE GANDHARVAS 
ANOTHER PROBLEM IN INDO-ARYAN COSMOLOGY 

Every student of Indo-Aryan mythology must often 
have wished for greater light upon the mythologic region 
in which the Gandharvas were imagined to have their 
proper dwelling place. In the investigation of the 
nature and activities of mythical beings the habitat, if 
known, often aids the inquirer if only by ruling out 
conjectures which without this knowledge would seem 
wholly admissible and perhaps decidedly plausible. In 
the case of the Gandharvas so little is clear and unques- 
tioned that any aid of this incidental variety is highly 
desirable. As to the true homeland of these beings no 
serious inquiry has to my knowledge as yet been made. 
Apart from Kuhn's passing allusion to the point in 
ZVS., i, 517, and Weber's, IS., ii, 224, 225, no reference 
to the question has attracted my attention. 

Some time ago, while engaged in the cosmological 
studies already printed in the Journal of the Oriental 
Society, an idea occurred to me which seemed only too 
good to be true. I was considering the fact that all of 
the seven concentric planetary heavens of the Indian 
thinkers are conceived of as inhabited, and that the 
tenants of each of these heavens are supposed to differ 
in stature, powers, longevity, etc., from the tenants of 
the others above or below, so that, as in Dante's Para- 
diso, each heaven possesses inhabitants adapted by their 
nature to the nature of their mythological sphere. The 
thought then came that, as the first or lunar heaven is 
the proper home of the Pitris, so the perfectly fitting 

197 



198 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

inhabitants of the fourth, or heaven of Venus, could be 
none other than the Gandharvas. The more I dwelt 
upon the idea the more alluring it appeared. The con- 
gruity of tenant to world and of world to tenant became 
more and more evident the more the two were studied. 
Moreover, with so vast a region for their occupancy the 
vastness of their number (60,000,000) was no longer 
embarrassing. 

In the Puranas somewhat later I came upon one lis 
of the celestial regions differing a little in terms from 
any I had ever previously noted. It began as usual 
with the "Pitri-Ioka" as the first in the series. This, 
of course, according to our "Key" (See JAOS, xxiii, 
388; also xxvi, 81), is the north-polar half of the earth- 
inclosing "lunar sphere." Next followed, as was to be 
expected, the heaven of Indra, the north-polar half of 
the moon-inclosing globe of the sun (JAOS, xxii, 138). 
Next above this "Indra-loka" came the third heaven, 
assigned to the Maruts and called "Marut-loka." Next 
higher, according to the "Key," should come the globe 
of Venus inclosing in its capacious interior the earth 
and the three spheres of the moon, the sun, and Mer- 
cury, all four concentric. Its north-polar half would be 
the heaven of Venus. In the new list it was styled the 
"Gandharva-loka." The fifth in the enumeration was 
styled "Jana-loka," the sixth "Tapa-loka," the seventh, 
as all the congruities required, "Brahma-loka" (Wilson, 
Vishnu Purana, p. 48, footnote). 

Such a list as this renders legitimate the inquiry, 
Where, when, and by what school of teachers, were the 
Gandharvas represented as natives of the fourth celestial 
region above the abode of men, the one corresponding 
in Pythagorean and oldest Babylonian thought to the 
heaven of Venus? 



THE GANDHARVA HOMELAND 199 

I may add, that I find it increasingly difficult to sup- 
press the conviction that, in the earliest Greek thought, 
the mythological (non-human) Mainades were by 
nature tenants of the earth-inclosing lunar sphere, and 
the Heliadai, with their sisters, tenants of the solar. 
May the suggestion appeal to some competent mycol- 
ogist, and result in an instructive monograph. 



SECTION VI— THE WORLD-TREE OF THE TEUTONS 

One of the least satisfactory portions of Professor 
De la Saussaye's valuable book on The Religion of the 
Teutons is that relating to the Askr Yggdrasil, or Tree 
of the World. His treatment of this myth is very brief 
and, at the end, he merely concurs in MullenhofFs 
declaration that a perusal of the pertinent passages in 
our sources "can leave in the mind only the most incon- 
gruous ideas concerning the character of the world-tree/ ' 

In my judgment two things go far toward explaining 
the admitted failure of experts in Teutonic mythology 
to reconstruct this tree in a way to harmonize with the 
literary data. The first is their reluctance to ascribe 
to the prehistoric authors of this and similar myths 
that power of thought and expression which they must 
have possessed. The second is f orgetfulness of the high- 
north viewpoint of the oldest Teutonic, Keltic, and 
Slavonic cosmological myths. 

Once grant to the far-off authors of the Aryan my- 
thologies a mental power adequate to conceive of their 
worlds celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, as all united in 
one organic unity, like the unity of a living tree, and we 
are entitled to look for something like rational fitness in 
their chosen symbol, however poetic or artistic it may be. 
So, too, the moment we take, as we ought to do, a high- 
north viewpoint in visualizing the heavens and earth, 
we immediately find the world's axis substantially up- 
right in position, and therefore easily seeming a column 
for the support of the dome of stars which revolves, as 
on a pivot, at its head. This column, extending from 

200 



WORLD-TREE OF THE TEUTONS 201 

visible zenith to lowest nadir of the universe, furnishes 
the one bond needed to give unity to all regions celestial, 
terrestrial, and infernal. It is the sacred Irniinsul, quod 
latine dicitur universalis columna, quasi sustinens omnia. 1 
It is the trunk of all world-trees. Generations ago this 
was clearly seen, and W. Menzel well said: "Dieses 
Symbol entsteht ursprunglich aus der Vorstellung der 
Weltachse." 

The only important difficulty in picturing Yggdrasil 
hi harmony with the mythological data is found in the 
account given of the ' 'roots." The Edda itself interprets 
the branches, saying that they "spread over the whole 
world and even reach above the sky." Of the "three 
roots," however, at least one seems to be represented as 
situated in a region naturally assigned to the branches. 
Among early interpreters, Ling evades the difficulty by 
suggesting that the Yggdrasil is merely a symbol of life, 
universal and human, and that the three roots sym- 
bolize the physical, the intellectual, and the moral 
principles respectively. Another attempted explanation 
has taken the three to mean "matter, organization, and 
spirit " (!). In Finn Magnusen's striking pictorial repre- 
sentation in his EddalaBren, Plate I, the first or lowest 
root is a root-system, the second a branch-system, and 
the third one knows not what. The picture is reproduced 
as frontispiece in Mallet's Northern Antiquities. 

In a study of the cosmical tree in twelve mythologies, 
published in the year 1885, 2 I referred briefly to the 
Yggdrasil, and made "its midbranches inclose or over- 
arch the abode of men." Not long after, however, on 
maturer consideration, I reached a somewhat modified 



1 Grimm, Deutsche MytJiologie, p. 759. 

2 Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race ai die North Pole, 
Boston, U.S.A., 11th ed., 1904, pp. 262-278. 



202 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

view, and one which still seems to me the true solution 
of the problem of the roots. As introductory to its 
presentation I would here first call attention to a noted 
lusus naturce found in the chief cemetery of the city of 
Oldenburg. It is a tall and symmetrical tree with two 
systems of roots, one in the ground, and the other in 
the air. The upper one constitutes a kind of roof, about 
ten feet from the ground, and under it people walk 
about freely. A rude sketch of the tree is presented be- 
low. At the time of my visit to it I read the folklore tale 
which accounts for the prodigy by stating that once 
upon a time, when a falsely accused maiden was on her 
way to the place of her execution, she plucked up a 
small shrub and, giving it to the unmerciful mob of her 
persecutors, bade them plant it top downward in the 
earth, assuring them that God would confirm her pro- 
testations of innocence by making it to grow with its 
roots in the air. According to what is now folk-faith 
her prophecy was fulfilled, and what was at first the 
taproot of the plant has become the trunk and beautiful 
top of a tall and shapely tree. A huge ring of roots is 
certainly there, high in the air, with only here and there 
a feeble leafstem struggling for life. As a permanent 
inscription on the main portal to the cemetery one reads 
to this day the words which the maiden's wicked but 
afterward convicted and remorse-smitten accuser to his 
dying day repeated over and over: "Die Ewigkeit ist 
lang! die Ewigkeit ist lang!" 

Now, rings of roots, similar to the two systems on the 
Oldenburg tree, are not so rare as may be supposed. 
They are very often found at the base of a stalk of 
Indian corn (maize). On a hemlock in the woods I once 
found a kind of aerial guy-root. It started out from the 
tree as a branch, more than a foot above the ground. 



WORLD-TREE OF THE TEUTONS 



203 



It then rooted itself close by in a high bank of earth, 
but after passing through this it again became a branch, 
and flourished as a low bough of the mother tree. Any 
tree whose branches radiate at certain nodes like the 
spokes of a wheel, one set of them above another, as in 
the case of the araucarian pines, would easily suggest to 




THE OLDENBURG TREE 

Showing a 6ection of its aerial root 
system 



THE YGGDRASIL 

Triradically depicted 



the imagination of a primitive people a continuation of 
the same system below the surface of the ground. 

In the light of the foregoing it is plain that a new 
and simple solution of the problem of the rooting of the 
Teutonic World-Tree can be had by making the three 
"roots" signify root-systems, the first and lowest being 
in the depths of hell, the second constituting the floor 
of the region in which men have their abode, and the 



204 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

third being situated just at the top of Cloudland, though 
still far below the starry abode of the immortal gods. 
This arrangement perfectly answers to the troublesome 
statement in the Grimnismal: "Hel dwells under one 
root, the frost-giants under the second, and the race of 
men under the third." See picture accompanying this 
paper. 

Combining this new interpretation with that which I 
gave of Bifrost in pages 155-158 of the work before 
referred to, and which identifies the bridges of Chinvat, 
Sirat, Bifrost, etc., with the axis-pillar of the universe, 
all further objects mythologically associated with Yggdra- 
sil, such as the doomstead of the gods, the two swans, 
the eagle, the squirrel Ratatosk, the headspring of all 
the world's waters, the four harts, Nidhogg and the 
infernal serpents — all take their appropriate places in 
the cosmos, and are found to have corresponding sym- 
bols in one or more of the world-trees of other my- 
thologies. To the attention of interested scholars I 
confidently commend it, stipulating only that they 
first read the recent account of the world-tree myths 
given in pages 992-1018 of John O'Neill's Night of the 
Gods — a work of immense erudition and of path-breaking 
significance. See also Folkard's Plant Lore. 



SECTION VII— PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED IN INDO- 
ARYAN COSMOLOGY 

To a greater extent than has been generally acknowl- 
edged Babylonian cosmology is the key to an under- 
standing of the Indo-Aryan. In proof of this statement 
the student is invited to spread out before him the 
diagram of the Babylonian cosmos printed in the twenty- 
third volume of the Journal of the American Oriental 
Society (opposite page 388), and to note the following 
remarkable correspondences: 

1. Like the "Upper E-KUR" in that diagram, the 
Sumeru of the Indo-Aryans is a mons montiwn, a true 
"Weltberg." 

2. In both cosmological systems this Weltberg is at 
the same time par excellence the possession of the gods, 
a Gotterberg. 

3. In both this Gotterberg is not only divinely vast 
and beautiful, but also, in shape, quadrangular. 

4. In both the axis of the heavens and of the earth 
is perpendicular in position, and consequently the top 
of the quadrangular Gotterberg is the true summit of 
the earth. 

5. In both this crowning summit of the earth has an 
antipodal counterpart in a corresponding inverted Welt- 
berg underneath the earth. In Chaldea this peculiar 
conception seems to have been of pre-Semitic antiquity. 
One of the first of Western scholars to recognize the 
parallelism and something of its significance for Com- 
parative Cosmology was Lenormant, who a generation 
ago wrote as follows: "Dans les conceptions de la cos- 

205 



206 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

mologie mythique des Indiens on oppose au Sou-Merou, 
*le bon Merou' du nord, un Kou-Merou mauvais et 
funest, qui y fait exactement un pendant et en est 
l'antith&se. De meme les Chalde*ens opposaient a la 
divine et bienheureuse montagne de l'Orient (accadien 
'garsag-babbarra = assyrien sad cit samsi) une montagne 
funeste et t£nebreuse (accadien 'garsag-gigga = assyrien 
sad erib sarnsi), situee dans les parties basses de la 
terre." — Origines de VHistoire, torn, ii, 1, p. 134. 

6. In the Babylonian cosmos the upper hemi-goea has 
seven stages; in the Indo-Aryan it has seven varshas. 

7. In the Babylonian system the lower or inverted 
hemi-gcea has seven stages; in the Indo-Aryan it has 
seven patalas. 

8. West of Babylonia is found the Hebrew conception 
of a quadrifurcate river of Paradise which flowed forth 
in opposite directions to water the four quarters of the 
pristine earth. East of Babylonia is found the Indo- 
Aryan conception of the Ganga-stream which, descend- 
ing from heaven to the top of Sumeru, there divides 
itself, according to the Vishnu Purana, into four world- 
rivers, and descending the several sides of the mountain 
from varsha to varsha, waters the whole earth. It is 
hardly possible to doubt that in both cases the concep- 
tion was borrowed from the world-view of the people 
residing midway between the Hebrews on the one side 
and the Indo-Aryans on the other, or was at least 
common to the three. 1 

9. In the Indo-Aryan, as in the Babylonian world- 
view, the seven divisions of the lower or inverted hemi- 



1 T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of Historic Records, 
etc., 2d ed., 1903, pp. 71-73. Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament 
im Lichte des alien Orients, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 102-104. F. Homme!, 
Aufsatze und Abhandlungen, pp. 326ff. 



PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED 207 

gcea can be described (as they are in the Maha-Bharata) 
as subterranean, and yet, at the same time, as capable 
of receiving light from the sun and moon. Our diagram 
clearly shows both the possibility and the entire natural- 
ness of this. 

10. In the Babylonian conception the upper or north- 
ern planetary hemi-ouranoi were seven in number, and 
each of them, in receding order away from the Weltberg, 
was located at an increasing interval or distance; so is 
it also in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. 

11. According to the Babylonians, the under or 
southern planetary hemi-ouranoi were also seven in num- 
ber, and these, numbering from their center, were 
located at ever wider distances asunder; so is it also 
with the dvipas in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. 

12. In Babylonian thought each of the celestial 
spheres was assigned to the guardianship and government 
of a particular divine being; so was also each dvlpa in 
Indo-Aryan thought. (See Wilson's Vishnu Purana, p. 
162.) 

13. In the Babylonian cosmos the lower hemi-ouranoi 
are, as a group, below the seven stages of the lower 
hemi-gcea; in like manner in the Indo-Aryan, the Narakas 
are, as a group, below the Patalas. (Wilson, ibid., 
p. 207.) 1 



1 We may be the more certain that in the Indo-Aryan cosmos the 
Narakas were the lower or infernal hemi-ouranoi from two striking 
facts: (1) The fact that in the downward direction the distances of the 
Narakas from each other increase in an arithmetical ratio just as do 
the distances of the heavens in the opposite direction. (2) The fact 
that the normal term of life in these successive infernal abodes grows 
longer and longer according to distance from the cosmic center pre- 
cisely as is the case in the successive celestial abodes. I have never 
found any text that gave such a representation of the Patalas. It may 
be added that the Rabbinical conception of two south-polar Gehennas 
(Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, pp. 328f.), the one terrestrial and 
the other celestial (the two exactly answering to two north-polar Para- 



208 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

14. At the same time, in the Babylonian system the 
regions included in the inverted hemi-ouranoi and those 
included in the inverted hemi-gcea slightly overlap. All 
the requirements of the system imply that the same was 
true in the Indo-Aryan. This feature also helps us to 
understand why the texts, and thus far their Occidental 
interpreters, present no clear and sharp distinction be- 
tween the two groups as to nature or location. Possibly 
a similar slight overlapping may explain the failure of 
Egyptologists to make between Tuat and Amentet the 
distinction clearly implied in certain passages of the most 
ancient texts. (See Budge's Book of the Dead, 1901, 
chap, lxiv, vol. i, p. 211.) 

15. In the Indo-Aryan as in the Babylonian system 
the lowest hells are antipodal to the highest heavens; 
hence the statement in the Vishnu Purana (Wilson, 
p. 209) : "The gods in heaven are beheld by the inhabi- 
tants of hell as they move vrith their heads inverted" In 
the Jain Sutras also persons in hell are represented as 
moving about with their "heads downward." (SBE. ? 
xlv, p. 279.) Even in Plutarch the same ancient idea 
survives. 1 

16. In both systems the diurnal movement of the 
sun is in a horizontal instead of a vertical plane, and 
night's darkness is caused simply by the passage of the 



dises, one terrestrial and the other celestial), is clearly a survival of 
the ancient Babylonian idea. Brief citations may be seen in Budge, 
The Gods of the Egyptians, 1904, i, 273f. The terrestrial Gehenna 
perfectly corresponds to the Indian Patalas as above interpreted, the 
celestial to the Narakas. 

1 "They [the virtuous] see the ghosts of people there turned upside 
down and as it were descending into the abyss." — On the Face in the 
Orb of the Moon, section 28. That the Greek astronomers derived 
their conception of the mutually antipodal x^ v an d avrixBiJv from the 
ancient Babylonians has long been clear to me. The Chthon was simply 
the Upper E-KUR, the Anti^hthon the inverted Lower E-KUR. 



PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED 209 

sun around the farther side of the Weltberg. According 
to Maspero, the same apparent paradox as to the sun's 
motion was held and taught by the most ancient Egyp- 
tians as well as by the most ancient Chaldeans. (Dawn 
of Civilization, Eng. ed., p. 544.) 

17. In both systems a cross-section of the cosmos in 
the plane of the equator would show seven solid hori- 
zontal world-rings, one within another, and all of them 
inclosing their common center. Here, possibly, was the 
origin of the "world-rings of rock" separated by seven 
intervening seas in the common description of the Bud- 
dhist world-view. It should be remembered, however, 
that in the Buddhist cosmography the tops of these 
world-rings are by no means in a common plane. 

18. In both systems the order of the seven planets is 
not that of the matured Greek teaching of Ptolemy, but 
is conformed to the older Babylonian view, according to 
which both sun and moon are nearer to the earth than 
the nearest of the remaining five. 

19. Precisely as in Babylonian thought the sphere of 
the fixed stars is far above, beneath, and beyond the 
seven concentric planetary globes, so in the Indo-Aryan 
is found, far above, beneath, and beyond the earth and 
all the Deva-lokas, the all-including shell of Brahma's 
cosmic egg. 

20. Finally, as in the Babylonian, so in the Indo- 
Aryan cosmos, there is present and visible to every eye 
that most wonderful of all monuments of prehistoric 
astronomic science, the starry world-girdle of the twelve- 
signed Zodiac, attesting in both peoples a clear recogni- 
tion of the great circles and the poles of the ecliptically 
defined celestial sphere. 

In the beginning of European investigations into 
the astronomical and geographic ideas encountered in 



210 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Sanskrit literature one of the most important of questions 
was this: Was the cosmological system of the Indo- 
Aryans of indigenous origin, or was it in its fundamentals 
due to Babylonian influence? In view of the twenty 
correspondences above enumerated it may safely be 
affirmed that this question is now answered. 1 As is 
usual, however, in similar cases, the determination of the 
historic fact has immediately started a multitude of new 
questions relative to the time, manner, cause, and mean- 
ing of the fact. These constitute so many challenges 
to the young on-coming scholars of a new century. 

Among the problems yet unsolved in this field, one 
of the most interesting and important is whether, in the 
beginning, the seven dvipas were really supposed to be 
continental "rings," horizontal in position. In some late 
documents they appear to be so represented, and yet 
there seems also to be some evidence going to show 
that in a prehistoric period the authors of Indian cos- 
mology on the East, like Pythagoras and succeeding 
astronomers of Greece on the West, 2 borrowed from the 
Babylonians the idea of seven concentric globes, "crystal- 
line spheres" presided over respectively by the seven 
planetary divinities. 

For example, such treatises as the Sarya-Siddhanta 
pronounce the first in the order of the dvipas a globe. 
But if the dvlpa that in all enumerations is the first of 
all and the most central of all was a globe, it is a natural 
a priori expectation that the remaining six members of 

*As long ago as in the year 1890 Professor Jensen could write of the 
origin of the cosmic system of the Indians as follows: "Dass diese An- 
schauung nicht aus Persien, sondern direct oder indirect aus Baby- 
lonien stammt, zeigt die weit grdssere Gleichartigkeit der babylonischen 
und indischen als die der persischen und indischen Ideen." — Kosmologie, 
p. 184. 

2 "Pythagoras apud Chaldseos conversatus est." — Diogenes Laert., 
De Vitis Philos., lib. viii, c. 1. 



PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED 211 

the Ciass will be found to be, or once to have been, globes 
also. 

Again, if in the beginning the Indo-Aryan series con- 
sisted of seven concentric spheres, like the Babylonian, the 
second of them, Plaksha, would correspond to the Baby- 
lonian lunar sphere, the globe of the moon-god Sin. 
Like that it would be conceived of as perfectly trans- 
parent, and hence like the others invisible. The visible 
lunar disk would doubtless be thought of, as it was in 
Babylonia, as the moon-god's "Ship of Light/ ' the 
vehicle in which in sacred state he made his nightly 
journeys round and round upon his spacious earth- 
inclosing sphere, lighting at the same time the central 
world of men within. In Babylonian thought the only 
natural passages into or out of this earth-inclosing lunar 
sphere were one through a north-polar gate on the "Way 
of Arm," and one through a south-polar gate on the 
"Way of Ea." Three items almost seem to imply that 
the original conception of Plaksha was in correspondence 
with this. 

First, while in the Vishnu Purana Vishnu is naturally 
represented as worshiped in all the dvipas below Brah- 
man's, he is said to be worshiped in Plaksha in the 
form or person of Soma, the moon. 

Second, in the account of the descent of Ganga from 
the throne of Vishnu in the north-polar heavens, the 
celestial stream is represented as falling on and "washing 
the lunar orb" before it reaches the top of Meru at the 
north pole of the earth. (Wilson's Vishnu Purana, 
pp. 170 and 228.) Of course, the only lunar orb that 
the celestial waters in making this direct descent at the 
pole could possibly encounter and wash w T ould be one 
overarching the whole northern hemisphere of the 
earth, precisely as did the globe of the moon-god Sin. 



212 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

Third, the Southern Buddhists, in some of their texts, 
almost seem to have retained an older Hindu idea of 
the same kind, for it is said of Yugandhara, the dvipa 
which in their system corresponds to Plaksha: "The 
region of Yugandhara covers, as a vaulted cope, the whole 
of these divisions/ ' (Edward Upham, History and 
Doctrines of Buddhism, p. 77. 1 ) Speaking from any 
standpoint on the surface of E-KUR, this would per- 
fectly apply to the globe of Sin. 

That the remaining (extra-lunar) dvlpas were origi- 
nally globes, and not annular disks, seems almost implied 
in the fact that according to the Puranas each, with the 
exception of the outermost, had divisions of its surface 
corresponding in number and apparently in form with 
those of the spherical Jambu-dvipa. This could not be 
the case were the dvlpas merely annular disks. Further- 
more, in the description of them given to Dr. Edward 
Upham by the Buddhist high priest of Ceylon, their 
undersides are represented as corresponding to the upper, 
which would imply antipodal regions similar in outline 
and equal in extent to the regions belonging to the 
upper or north-polar half of the cosmos as a whole 
(loc. cit, p. 86). Finally, in a prize essay printed in the 
Asiatic Researches in 1849, Babu Shome, a native Indian 
teacher, closes a description of the dvlpas as follows: 
"The seven divisions [varshas] in each of the continents 
[dvipasl are separated by seven chains of mountains and 
seven rivers, lying breadthways, and placed at such 
inclination in respect to one another that if a straight 
line be drawn through any chain of mountains or rivers 



1 Of the value of the text thus rendered by Upham, or of the correct- 
ness of the rendering, the present writer has no means of forming an 
opinion, but it may at least be said that Dr. Upham had no discover- 
able inducement to attempt to represent Yugandhara as a globe. 



PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED 213 

on the other continents and produced toward the central 
isle it would meet the center of the earth.' ' These 
terms certainly seem to imply, not only that the dvipas 
were concentric globes, but also that the varshas of each, 
and the patalas of each, and the mountain ridges by 
which in each the varshas and patalas were respectively 
bounded, were all in such perfect correspondence in the 
system that a right line in any direction from the center 
point of the earth would, if sufficiently produced, pass 
through an identically shaped varsha or patala, or an 
identically placed mountain range, in each of seven 
concentric spheres. Babu Shome does not give his 
textual authority, but, though a Christian convert, he 
was in constant touch with the chief Brahman teachers 
of Calcutta in his time. Surely the authorship and the 
warrant of so incomparably elaborate and beautiful a 
world-concept as this calls for an early and exhaustive 
investigation. 1 

Another problem which still awaits solution is the 
following: When, where, and under what influences in 
the development of the Buddhist form of the Indo- 
Aryan cosmology did the term Jambu-dvlpa cease to 
designate the central one of all the spheres and come 
to mean merely one of four diversely shaped, but sym- 
metrically located, islands far out in the outermost of 
the seven world-seas? The "nebular hypothesis" may 

Un the Kalpa Sutra of Bhadrabahu (SBE., vol. xxii, pp. 227-229) 
Harinegamesi is represented as flying "upward" in a straight line from 
Jambu-dvlpa to the heavenly council-chamber and throne-room of 
Sakra, yet as passing on his way "right through numberless continents 
and oceans," His previous descent from Sakra's heaven was also 
"right through numberless continents and oceans." Neither of these 
representations is at all compatible with Indian cosmology as com- 
monly interpreted. On the other hand, once conceive of the dvipas 
as originally concentric globes, and allow for an exaggeration merely 
in the number, and the representations perfectly fit the requirements 
of the world-view. 



214 THE EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES 

think to explain how an outermost revolving ring may 
break up and gather itself together into a planetary 
mass, but who can tell us when, where, and how this 
central Jambu-dvlpa got itself first plucked out of the 
center of the total cosmic system, then contracted to 
the dimensions of the Buddhists' triangular isle, and 
finally towed out and anchored in the world-engirdling 
sea? One's first thought is that this revolution in 
cosmological thought must have taken place in conse- 
quence of the transference of the center of Buddhist 
consciousness from continental India to insular Ceylon; 
but even this consideration fails to relieve the utter 
unthinkableness of the change that crowded six or seven 
enormously extended world-rings and world-seas into the 
narrow space between Ceylon and the Asian mainland. 

A further problem remains, the investigation of which 
cannot fail to throw light upon the one just mentioned. 
It relates to the cosmology of the Jains, It asks: 
Wherein at the beginning did the Jain cosmology agree 
with, and wherein differ from, that presented in the 
Epic and Puranic texts? When and why did it take 
on the modifications which now differentiate it from the 
traditional teaching of the modern Brahmans on the one 
hand and from the Buddhist cosmology on the other? 

These questions have not yet received the attention 
they deserve. Of one of the most important of the 
texts affording data for their solution Weber had nothing 
more or better to say than that it contains "nur mythische 
Phantastereien" (Indische Studien, xvi, 390). Even 
Professor Thibaut, in his excellent work on the astro- 
nomical and related ideas of India, makes no effort to 
trace the origin or significance of that strange doctrine 
of the earth's two suns and two moons found in the 
Jain astronomies (as it was also in the teaching of some 



PROBLEMS STILL UNSOLVED 215 

of the Greek astronomers), 1 but dismisses the whole 
subject with the cool remark that this peculiarity of the 
system is "ohne Belang" (Grundriss, hi, 22). 

Other peculiarities of the Jain cosmology well deserve 
investigation both by themselves and according to com- 
parative methods. Such, for example, is the enumera- 
tion of the Canda-diva and the Sura-diva in clue order 
after Jambuddiva, and yet the making of Dhayaisanda, 
beyond the Lavana sea, the second in the normal series 
of the dvipas. Another is the bringing down of Pushkara 
from the seventh place in the original series to the 
third, and the new definition of the Manussa-Khetta 
connected therewith. (E. Leumann, Indische Studien, 
xvi, 390-392.) 

Possibly we may never obtain the data required 
for the solution of the several problems mentioned in 
the foregoing paper. It is encouraging, however, to 
remember that in every field of knowledge the clear 
formulation of the questions next needing to be attacked 
often proves to be a most helpful preliminary to new 
discoveries. 



1 "They (the Jains) similarly allot twice that number to the salt 
ocean, six times as many to Dhatuci Dvipa, twenty-one times as many 
to the Calodadhi, and seventy-two of each to Pushkara Dvipa." — F. 
Buchanan, in Asiatic Researches, vol. ix, p. 322. According to Hardy's 
Manual of Buddhism, pp. 20 and 22, footnote, they also locate the moon 
eighty yojanas above the sun instead of one yojana below it. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Altenburg, 159. 
Ameis, 167. 
Amelineau, 107. 
Anaxagoras, 73. 
Anaximenes, 73. 
Aristotle, 47, 171, 173, 177. 
Axiochus, 73. 

Baentsch, B., 117. 

Bailly, J. S., 128. 

Bancroft, H. H., 23, 172. 

Basil, 44. 

Bastian, Adolf, 100. 

Beal, S., 100, 135, 139, 177. 

Bender, W., 111. 

Bergaigne, 91. 

Berger, E. H., 123, 126. 

Bergk, 108. 

Birch, S., 174. 

Bischoff, E., 36, 52. 

Blass, Friedrich, 72. 

Bleeck, 189. 

Boll, Franz, 123. 

Boscawen, W. St. C, 35, 66. 

Breasted, 65. 

Brocklesby, 121. 

Brown, Robert, 161, 181. 

Bmgsch-Bey, 60, 61, 66, 108, 

174, 194. 
Buchanan, F., 215. 
Buckley, A., 162, 164. 
Budge, 65, 67, 104, 105, 208. 
Buff on, 128. 
Bunhury, 160, 167, 180, 181, 

184, 187. 
Burges, George, 73. 
Burgess, Ebenezer, 80. 
Burnouf, 189. 
Burton, E. R., 129. 

Caporali, E., 128. 
Castren, 190. 
Chabas, 61, 174. 
Charles, R. H., 48. 
Cheyne, T. K, 24, 130. 
Cicero, 39. 
Clarke, Adam, 50. 



Colebrooke, 173. 
Copernicus, 40. 
Cox, G. W., 159, 179. 
Craig, J. A., 76. 
Creuzer-Guigniaut, 68, 176. 
Cumont, Franz, 67. 

Dante, 40, 67, 186, 197. 
Daremberg, 73. 
Darmesteter, James, 85. 
Delitzsch, Friedrich, 78, 173. 
Diodorus Siculus, 38, 176. 
Diogenes Laertius, 210. 
Dohring, A., 117. 
Dreyer, J. L. E., 47, 62. 
Drummond, James, 48. 
Dupuis, 173. 

Ebers, 69. 
Eggers, 167. 
Eisenlohr, 167. 
Eisenmenger, 50, 207. 
Epping, 122. 
Erman, 65, 105. 
Eudoxus, 47. 
Euripides, 177. 

Feer, Leon, 119. 
Flach, 170. 
Fleckeisen, 158. 
Foerster, 170. 
Folkard, 204. 
Fontane, 175, 189. 
Forbiger, 160. 
Fries, C, 78, 117. 
Frobenius, L., 23. 

Garrett, 177. 

Gaster, M., 52. 

Gerland, 159, 179. 

Ginzel, F. K., 117. 

Giorgi, 100. 

Gladstone, 160, 161, 179, 182, 

186. 
Golemscheff, 175. 
Gray, Asa, 128. 
Gray, L. H., 92. 



217 



218 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Grill, J., 190. 
Grimm, 183, 190, 201. 
Gruppe, O. F., 39. 
Guigniaut, 68. 
Gunkel, Hermann, 130. 

Hall, R. H., 68. 

Hammurabi. 76. 
Hardy, E., 215. 
Hardy, R. S., 37. 
Hastings, James, 19. 
Hayman, 162, 187, 188. 
Heer, Oswald, 128. 
Heimreich, 181. 
Herodotus, 61, 76, 108, 161. 
Hesiod, 75, 170, 194. 
Hewitt, J. F., 122. 
Homer, 48, 70-76, 116. 
Hommel, Fritz, 33, 36, 37, 66, 

123, 206. 
Hopkins, E. W., 85, 96. 
Hovelacque, 189. 
Hiising, G., 117. 
Hughes, T. P., 53. 

Jensen, P., 33, 34, 35, 36. 122, 

210. 
Jeremias, A., 36, 38, 45, 51, 67, 

78, 130, 206. 
Jeremias, F., 38. 
Jevons, F. B., 111. 
Johns, C. H. W., 17, 76. 
Jordan, 157, 167. 

Kallimachos, 186. 
Kallippus, 47. 
Kammer, 167. 
Kant, 111- 

Keary, C. F., 158, 176. 
Keerl, P. F., 31, 190. 
Keightley, 181. 
King, L. W., 68. 
Knight, R. P., 178, 186. 
Koeppen, 141. 
Krause, Ernst, 129. 
Kriss, 128. 
Kugler, 117. 
Kuhn, 108, 197. 
Kuntze, Otto, 128. 
Kurtz, J. H., 44. 

Lagrange, 123. 
Lang, H. O., 104. 
Lanier, Sidney, 182. 
Lanzone, 107. 



Lawton, W. C, 71. 
Lazzarini, G., 128. 
Le Conte, Joseph, 128. 
Lefebure, 61, 174. 
Lehmann, 122. 
Lenormant, 173, 176, 205. 
Lepsius, J., 47, 117. 
Lepsius, Karl R., 66. 
Lessmann, H., 117. 
Letherby, W. R., 35. 
Leumann, E., 215. 
Lieblein, 61, 174. 
Ling, 202. 
Lueken, 177. 

Magnusen, 201. 

Mahler, 122. 

Mallet, D., 104. 

Mallet, M., 202. 

Mannhardt, 176. 

Mason, 172. 

Maspero, 33, 37, 58-69, 104, 106, 

174, 175, 192, 194, 209. 
Massey, G., 69. 

Maunder, E. W., 45, 119, 122. 
Maury, A., 174. 
Mayer, 122. 
Menant, 195. 
Menzel, W., 141, 170, 174, 183, 

190, 201. 
Merivale, H., 178, 180. 
Middleton, P., 175. 
Miller, O. D., 66, 222. 
Mitchel, O. M., 44. 
Monier- Williams, 67, 98, 173. 
Montanus, 149. 
Morris, 177. 
Mueller, F. Max, 99. 
Mueller, Ivan, 76. 
Muir, John, 173. 
Myer, Isaac, 33. 

Naville, 67, 194. 
Neriosengh, 189. 
Neubronner, 121. 
Newcomb, Simon, 24, 120. 
Nielsen, D., 117. 
Nitzsch, G. W., 167. 

Obry, 177. 
Oldenberg, H., 93. 
O'Neill, John, 114, 204 
Oppenheim, S., 47. 
Oppert, 222. 
Orelli, 52. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



219 



Orton, James, 128. 

Packard, L. R., 70. 

Paley, 188. 

Pallas, 141. 

Palmer, E. H., 53. 

Parmenides, 47. 

Penck, A., 128. 

Petrie, F., 65, 66. 

Philo, 48. 

Pierret, 69. 

Pinches, 206. 

Pindar, 72. 

Plato, 39, 47, 88, 113, 194. 

Pliny, 187. 

Plunket, E. M., 122. 

Plutarch, 102, 208. 

Poole, R. S., 174. 

Porphyrius, 168. 

Prefier, 157, 166, 167. 

Proctor, R. A., 122, 124. 

Ptolemy, 40, 209. 

Puini, C., 36. 

Pulle\ F. L., 36. 

Pye, Samuel, 44. 

Pythagoras, 39, 47, 88, 210. 

Quatrefages, 128. 
Quentin, 123. 

Radau, Hugo, 33, 44. 
Rapp, 108. 
Renouf, 69, 104. 
Rhys, John, 129. 
Richthoven, 14. 
Rinck, 158. 
Robiou, 161. 
Rogers, R. W., 46. 
Roth, Eduard, 68. 
Roy, 97. 

Saglio, 73. 

Salmond, S. D. F., 46, 48. 

Saporta, Count, 128. 

Sastri, Pundit, 80. 

Saussaye, De la, 200. 

Sayce, A. H., 35, 36, 75, 122, 175, 

193. 
Schack-Schackenburg, 65. 
Schiaparelli, G., 26ff., 44. 
Schlegel, G., 122. 
Scribner, G. H., 128. 
Schwartz, 124. 
Seymour, T. D., 72. 
Shakespeare, 105. 



Shome, Babu, 87, 212. 
Siecke, G., 117. 
Spencer, Herbert, 172. 
Speyer, 84. 

Spiegel, F., 82, 115, 189. 
Spiegelberg, 65. 
Stanley, 50. 
St. Clair, G., 67. 
Steindorff, 65, 68, 104. 
Sterrett, 170. 
Stewart, J. A., 73, 75. 
Strabo, 189. 
Strassmaier, 122. 
Stuart, V., 176. 

Tennyson, 133. 

Terrien de la Couperie, 14. 

Thibaut, 86, 93, 214. 

Thompson, 174. 

Tiele, C. F., 38, 173, 174, 175. 

Tilak, 74, 85, 129. 

Troels-Lund, 47. 

Tylor, E. B., Ill 

Ukert, 160, 179. 
Upham, E., 90, 210. 

Vergil, 177. 

Volcker, 157, 160, 163, 164, 166, 

168, 178, 185. 
Von Strauss-und-Torney, 65. 
Voss, J. H., 166. 

Waddell, L. A., 37, 100, 137. 

Wagner, M., 128. 

Wallis, H. W., 36. 

Ward, W. H., 192. 

Weber, 197, 214. 

Weicker, G., 43. 

Wetstein, 50. 

Whitehouse, O. C, 19ff., 29, 33, 

86. 
Whitney, W. D., 80. 
Wiedemann, 65. 
Wilser, J. D. L., 129. 
Winckler, Hugo, 34-37, 45, 66, 

78, 92, 223. 
Windischmann, 189. 
Wolf, F. A., 166. 
Worcester, Elwood, 34. 
Wunsche, A., 52. 

Zimmer, 91. 
Zimmern, H., 40. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Akkado-Sumerian world-view, 

40. 
Amenti, 67, 69, 174-176. 
Apocryphal literature, 48. 
Arctic origin of men, 128, 196. 
Arezur, 81. 
Arupa-loka, 143. 
Ascents to the heavens, 49, 52, 

116. 
Askr Yggdrasil, 200ff . 
Astronomy among savages, 111. 
Astronomy on and within the 

Arctic Circle, 125, 126. 
Atlas-pillar, 43, 177, 195. 

Babylon, influence of, 14, 39, 45, 

66, 76, 210. 
Babylonian universe, 33-40. 
Bifrost, 204. 
Borak, 53. 

Chinese world-view, 14. 
Chinvat bridge, 118, 204. 
Cosmology, comparative, 11, 

130, 205. 
Counter-earth, 39, 69, 208. 

Descensus ad inferos in St. Paul's 

view, 44, 47. 
Doomstead of the gods, 204. 
Duat, see Tuat. 
DvTpas interpreted, 86; names, 

86. 

Earth, the, 18, 25, 27, 34, 35, 39, 
46, 58, 63, 79, 97; thought of 
as a ball, even by savages, 23, 
172. 

Earth and -'Counter-earth," 39, 
69, 208. 

Etana, 116. 

Firmament duplicated, 29; flood- 
gates in the lower, 29; vault 
of great solidity, 29; conflict- 
ing views of, 44, 45. 



Gandharva-loka, the heaven of 

Venus, 197ff. 
Ganymede, 116. 
Gates of the sun, 192-196. 
Gehennas, south polar, 207. 
Ghosts move with their heads 

downwards, 172, 174, 208. 
Gods, intercourse of, 116. 

Hades of Hades, 67. 

Half-yearly hell torments, 49. 

Hara-Berezaiti, 81, 83. 

Heavens, eight in Babylonian 
thought, 36; plural in Hebrew, 
46; "Ascension of Isaiah," 49; 
ascensions of Mohammed, 53; 
heavens and hells touch, 51; 
pillars of heaven, 58ff.; Navel 
of, 61, 193; Ladder of, 60, 67, 
127; heavens of Buddhism de- 
scribed, 133-143. 

Heliadai, 199. 

Hells, Babylonian, 36; Rabbin- 
ical, 49; Koranic, 52; Buddhis- 
tic, 95, 99; all south polar, 36, 
49,99. 

Hole in the sky, 51 < 

Ilavrita, 82. 
Inferno, 27, 48. 

Ishtar's descent to underworld, 
75. 

Jain cosmology, 85, 208, 214. 
Jambu dvipa, 86, 88; change of 

meaning, 97. 
Jambu tree, 145. 

Keshvares, 81. 

King Solomon, 29; his throne, 

51. 
Koranic world-view, 52-57. 
Kvanlras, 82. 

Length of life in the successive 
heavens, 138ff.; in the Tapana- 
hell, 147. 



221 



222 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Living and dead antipodal, 38, 

174, 177, 208. 
Lunar sphere, earth-enclosing, 

101, 119, 199, 211. 

Mainades, 199. 

Meru, the beautiful, 80, 98, 135, 

211. 
Mithraism, 67. 
Moon not to be confounded with 

the lunar sphere, 101, 118, 199. 
Mountain of sunrise identical 

with the mountain of sunset, 

193. 
Myths, interpretation difficult, 

102, 112. 

Narakas, 95, 99; below the 

Patalas, 207. 
Navel of the Earth, 93, 193, 195. 
Navel of Heaven, 61, 193. 
New Earth, The, 47. 
Nidhogg, 204. 
Nile of heaven, 64, 104. 

Paradises, north polar, 130, 207. 

Patalas, inverted counterparts 
of the varshas, 84, 213. 

Path of the Devas, 118. 

Path of the Pitris, 119. 

Peplos of Harmonia, 113. 

Philosophy attempted by pre- 
historic men, 110. 

Planets, order of the seven, 37. 

Pythagorean system, origin of, 
13. 

Quadrifrontal world-fountain, 
74, 98, 116, 190. 

Rakia, 22, 44, 45. 
Ratatosk, 204. 

Sabeanism, 67, 118. 

Sheol, 19, 27; entrance, 42; 

seven divisions, 50, 53. 
Ship of Light, 211. 
Sirat bridge, 204. 
Soul, winged and birdlike, 43. 



Spindle of Necessity, 113. 
Stars, the, cabled to iron canopy, 

64; fixed as nails in a roof, 45; 

visible to the dead as to the 

living, 38, 176. 
Sun-barque, 62, 104-108. 
Sun's course horizontal, 37, 73, 

98, 145, 208. 

Target-board maps incorrect, 86, 

93. 
Throne-cities of the heavens, 

117. 
Tuat problem, 104-108. 

Universe, Akkado-Sumerian, 40; 
Babylonian, 33-40; Biblical, 
41fl\; Buddhistic, 95-100; Chi- 
nese, 14; Egyptian, 58-69, 
104; Homeric, 70-79; 157-191; 
Indo-Iranian, 79-93; 205ff.; 
Koranic, 52ff.; Rabbinic, 49ff.; 
Vedic, 91. 

Varshas, 80. 

Waters above the firmament, 
31, 32; below the firmament, 
32; crossed by the dead, 37, 
44, 176. 

Way of Anu, Frontispiece, 75, 
118. 

Way of Ea, Frontispiece, 75, 211. 

World-axis, 117; variously pic- 
tured, 113, 177. 

World-doors, 75. 

World-fountain, 74, 98, 190, 
206. 

World-thresholds, 75. 

World-trees, 114, 200. 

Yggdrasil, 200ff. 
Yugandhara, a covering vault, 
212. 

Zodiac, mislocated, 33; in Baby- 
lonian system, 36, 38, 39; 
equated with rakia, 45; its 
antiquity, 119-123, 209. 



